Win as a team, lose as Tony Romo. That could have been the Dallas Cowboys' playoff mantra over the past decade. Romo was not an innocent bystander during those years, of course, but if he's going to get the bulk of the blame for excruciating postseason defeats, he deserves some of the praise for leading the winning fourth-quarter drive against the Detroit Lions in the wild-card round Sunday.
As fate would have it, shoddy officiating overshadowed this defining sequence for Romo, but even if the Cowboys had lost -- especially if they had lost -- the opportunity was ripe for taking a closer look at Romo's postseason legacy.
Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh planted the seed a night earlier, when he declared his quarterback, Joe Flacco, to be the best in the league. It was a coach's postgame hyperbole after Flacco delivered his fifth consecutive stellar postseason performance, dating to the Ravens' championship run following the 2012 season.
When you spread a few games across multiple Januaries and then try to form them into career legacies, key details tend to fall by the wayside. Romo was ineffective through most of the Cowboys' victory Sunday, but for the fifth time in five career playoff games, he was facing a defense among the NFL's toughest on opposing quarterbacks that season. The reverse has been true for Flacco during his current sensational, five-game playoff run.
The point is the quality of the opposition tends to be overlooked in the postseason, and that important context tells us something about Romo's chances to bring down the Packers this weekend. That is where we kick off my look at 10 takeaways from the wild-card round.
