Super Bowl champs and Pro Football Hall of Famers Joe Montana and Jerry Rice—the former quarterback and wide receiver, respectively, for the Dallas Cowboys’ bitter rivals the San Francisco 49ers—said Wednesday they sympathize with Tony Romo’s “tough situation” as a backup to rookie ‘Boys QB Dak Prescott. But they agreed the Dallas NFL team has no choice but to stick with Prescott as its starting quarterback.
“Tony Romo is now making over $20 million as a backup. And he came out, he manned up, and said all the right things,” Rice said. “Prescott earned [the starting role], he deserves it, they’re 8 and 1. So Tony backing him 100 percent has to be really difficult—for you to man up and think of the entire picture, the team. Prescott, right now, you don’t want to mess with that. So [Romo] needs to take that backup role.”
Montana, whose famous pass to Dwight Clark deep-sixed Dallas’ hopes in the 1981 NFC Championship game, agreed with Rice. But he added that the Cowboys’ situation is “different” than when he was shoved aside a decade later by Steve Young, a younger 49ers QB. Montana subsequently left San Francisco to play for the Kansas City Chiefs before retiring.
Romo “is coming back in the middle of the season, and the kid is playing extremely well. Dak’s shown he can come back and play at the end of the game,” Montana said. “When I left [in 1991] … I said, ‘I’m not competing [with Young] for the job. After all I’ve done, I at least deserve that.’ I told them ‘I want to search somewhere else, because I can still play.’
“It’s not easy,” Montana went on about Romo’s plight. “I understand where [Romo] is coming from. This is a tough situation for him.”
Montana and Rice made their comments during a luncheon interview with ESPN’s Hannah Storm at the EY 2016 Strategic Growth Forum in Palm Springs, California. About 60 executives from Dallas are attending the conference.
