Like a good cereal box decoder ring, the Tony Romo "retirement" from the NFL is a mysterious gift that keeps on giving.
Earlier this month, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said the team had "no succinct plans" for a Romo retirement ceremony at this point because "Tony hasn't [retired]."
Now this, from ESPN.com Cowboys beat man Todd Archer:
*Nobody is wearing No. 9 on the current roster and unless they had a quarterback with an affinity for the number, it could be a while before they choose to give out the number. *
And this...
Inside The Star, the Cowboys have yet to move a player into Romo's old locker, either. That could change. Coach Jason Garrett has put team leaders at different corners of the locker room, but Romo's spot remains vacant.
Over the weekend, Cowboys quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson told Scout.com that it would be "fun to speculate" on Romo returning from the broadcast booth should something happen to entrenched starter Dak Prescott. It's a comment that got taken way out of context during a slow news cycle, but his answer to the question -- On an emergency Romo return being the plan on anyone's mind -- is still interesting.
"You know it's hard to say. Those conversations about Tony and 'What's he going to do, is he going to Houston, is he going to Denver, is he going into broadcasting?', they were way above my floor, where I'm at. It's fun to speculate about that, if Dak were to go down in week 2, would Tony come back? I don't know the answer to that. I just don't know. Do I think he's capable of coming back and playing? Most definitely. Does he want to or what his commitment is to the network? I don't know that, so it's fun to think about, and it's fun water-cooler topics to talk about, [even without] information to make a definitive answer on that."
At least for now, all of this leads me to the conclusion that there will be no final conclusion any time soon. As I noted in the Jones article above, Dallas could just be saving up for a Derek Jeter-like retirement ceremony like the one the Yankees legend had on Mother's Day this year -- two years after his exit from Major League Baseball. They also could simply be waiting for retirement papers, which have yet to come.
