I Wonder How Jessica Simpson Feels About Dating Choking Losers

Along with libel and publishing national security secrets, criticizing Tony Romo must be one of the few freedoms not enjoyed by the press in this country. How else to explain why Romo is getting off scot-free for completely melting down in the second half of today's divisional playoff game? He was awful; almost single-handedly blowing the game for his 13-3 team, yet the media is ignoring this fact completely. I suppose after the 16-month media deification of Romo, they must be resistant to using His name in vain.
I haven't seen anybody choke that badly since Chris Webber traveled and called a timeout he didn't have in a four-second span during the 1993 NCAA National Championship Game. Yet, to listen to the press, Romo merely had a rough fourth quarter after playing fun, magical ball during the first three. This guy could run over a dog with his car and people would hail him for helping to control the pet population.
Instead of Romo's meltdown, the storyline that has emerged from the Cowboys/Giants game is Eli Manning leading his team to an NFC Championship. (Forget that, while Eli played a fine game, he was hardly the best player on the field for the Giants.)
Conversely, Romo was awful at the end of the game for Dallas. He took two unfathomable sacks in the fourth quarter, earned an inexplicable intentional grounding call while standing in the middle of the pocket, called a crippling timeout as the play clock expired, almost earned a delay of game penalty following that timeout, lost his composure with his teammates, officials and coaches and, generally, looked like he was experiencing a complete meltdown. Man, it was so awesome.
Of course, nobody is talking about this right now. It's all about Eli or Wade Phillips or how the Cowboys' collapse was a "team effort". Sure it was; everyone contributed to the loss. But Romo was the main contributer. He was like the guy at the benefit who gives $10,000 and gets his name atop the program while the rest of the team were the donors listed en masse in the $500 Friends category. (Patrick Crayton might be a step-up from that low-level because of the play where he stopped running on one play late in the game. As for Roy Williams, he sponsored the whole event because he not good at football.)
The AP game recap touches on Romo's play and, of course, the Jessica Simpson thing, but bails him out by not attributing the timeouts or sacks to Romo himself. (Yes, the sacks weren't helped the Cowboys o-line, but Romo had ample opportunity to get rid of the ball on both the sacks. He panicked instead. It was delightful.)
So, in The Savior's two playoff games he has: Frittered away a 4th-quarter lead at home against a banged up secondary and mishandled an easy snap on a game-winning field goal. Romo should be developing a reputation as a choker, but instead I think we're going to see the "successful player battles playoff ghosts" story be played up by the press for the forseeable future. And that's just crap. The Giants are not good. Without Shockey, they really had no business beating the Cowboys. But with the ineffectiveness of Roy Williams and late-game freakout by Romo, the Giants sneaked into the NFC Championship Game where they'll lose to destiny in the form of Brett Favre.
You realize we're looking at a Favre/Brady Super Bowl, right? Newspaper articles about the two will have to be printed on sheets of taffy to counterbalance the treacle of the text. And if not Favre, then we'll have to deal with two weeks of "is Eli actually the better Manning brother?" This could get ugly real fast, but not as ugly as Tony Romo's fourth quarter today. Because that... That was as beautiful as ugly gets.