Cowboys' awful injury luck continues with Tony Romo's broken collarbone

The Cowboys' injury luck, which had already started off at nightmare level in the young 2015 season, just got a lot worse.

Doug Farrar | Sep 20, 2015

Cowboys' awful injury luck continues with Tony Romo's broken collarbone /

The Cowboys' injury luck, which had already started off at nightmare level in the young 2015 season, just got a lot worse. Dallas lost rookie pass rusher Randy Gregory for at least a month to a high ankle sprain and top receiver Dez Bryant for anywhere from six to 12 weeks to a foot injury in the team's Week 1 win over the Giants. But in the third quarter of Sunday's game against the Eagles, quarterback Tony Romo was slammed to the turf at Lincoln Financial Field while trying to recover a fumble. The team later announced that Romo had sustained a broken left clavicle, the same injury he suffered in 2010. If that's the case, Romo will likely be out for six to eight weeks.

Back then, Romo suffered the injury in Week 7 and was done for the season as the Cowboys straggled to a 6–10 mark with backup quarterback Jon Kitna mopping up. It's tough to imagine this year's Cowboys team doing much better without their four-time Pro Bowl quarterback and franchise leader. Even without Bryant as his primary target, Romo was doing well against the Eagles until the injury, completing 18 of 27 passes for 195 yards.

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“I just couldn't move without it really being painful in the shoulder,” Romo said in 2010 after the injury, which happened against the Giants. “I was just having a hard time just breathing. ... At a certain point you're like, OK, then something is wrong—I just know I'm not myself. It's disappointing when you're in that situation.”

Now, the Cowboys' only real option at quarterback is Brandon Weeden, who was drafted by the Browns in the first round of the 2012 draft out of Oklahoma State but has never shown anything approaching starter-level performance in the NFL. It's Weeden's second season with the Cowboys after the Browns released him in March 2014. He completed 24 of 41 passes for 303 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions in five games and one start last season. The Cowboys are still trying to establish their running game after the departure of DeMarco Murray in free agency, and Romo represented their only true offensive identity, especially after Bryant went down in Week 1.

Now, unless Weeden becomes something he's never been before, or Jerry Jones is able to strike gold on the fringes of the free-agent market, the Cowboys' season looks as good as done.

Published Sep 20, 2015

DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009, Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine. He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.