Tony Romo needs to be better at getting the ball to Roy Williams

By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL

jenfloyd@star-telegram.com

IRVING — Roy Williams had a very good point of contention Thursday and, quite frankly, I did not have a very good answer.

"I don’t know why y’all are trying to make me T.O.," he said.

We were talking about his supposedly back-stabby, No. 81-ish, not-Romo-friendly quip about "I’m the No. 1 receiver. But things are going the No. 2’s way." That inexplicably became a mini-brouhaha because, apparently, we no longer appreciate well-played double entendre nowadays.

And in Cowboysland, truthiness also apparently poses a problem.

Let’s get a few things clear: Roy is not a bad dude, or a bad football player, or a bust (not yet), or a whiner (not lately), or a T.O. starter kit, or even the least bit wrong in anything he said Wednesday.

Anybody who has watched a series or two of Cowboys football recognizes things are going Miles Austin’s way lately, as they should be, since:

(A) QB Tony Romo likes throwing to Miles.

(B) The Cowboys are winning with Romo throwing to Miles, and;

(C) The whole Romo-Roy thing remains, well, complicated.

Therein lies the other and bigger idiocy of bashing Roy. He was right when he said "[Miles] gets the ball thrown correctly his way. I’m stretching and falling and doing everything." Talking on Thursday at Valley Ranch to players and coaches and scouts, and guys who just know, produced an embarrassment of agreement:

As good as Romo has been lately, he has been not so good at getting Roy the ball.

All of them say film has been brutally explicit on this point, and answers have been hard to come by. What I did not hear were even whispers about poor route running, or loafing, or alligator arms.

"We are still working out the kinks," Roy said. "I’m so not going after the quarterback by saying that. I’m saying 'we,’ and we are trying to work it out."

His supposedly selfish, you-know-what self proceeded to stay after practice a couple of days this week to do just that with Romo, because he knows and Cowboys players and coaches know if they are going to beat good teams, starting with Philly on Sunday, Roy has to become a bigger factor.

This is not controversy. This is reality.

We are so predictable in this town. We get exactly what we said we wanted a year ago, for Romo to be able to go to who was hot and not worry about salary or ego or postgame histrionics or anything else, and we look for another problem.

So now everybody is rushing to Roy and wondering why he isn’t producing and how he feels about not producing and asking and asking until he finally tells the truth instead of PC nonsense, and we rip him for saying what anybody watching film knows.

It is not working with him and Romo right now, so the Cowboys are going elsewhere until it does.

In fact, if any Cowboys’ comments merit further examination, it was Romo and his attempt to link this Roy silliness to what happened with No. 81 a year ago.

"We’ve been through this before with people trying to intersect and divide a football team," Romo said, somehow turning a question about Roy and him being wonky into an argument that what divided this team a year ago was anything except for T.O.

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