Dallas Cowboys

Skip Bayless explains why he's excited for Tony Romo to finally play on Sunday

Published Dec. 30, 2016 4:49 p.m. ET

Andrew Lynch

An entire season's worth of whispers, hand-wringing and innuendo will come to a head on Sunday, as the Dallas Cowboys reportedly expect to let backup quarterback Tony Romo take the field against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Yet Romo's status for Week 17 is just proof that there never was a quarterback controversy in the first place — and that has Skip Bayless excited for the Cowboys' season finale.

BAYLESS: I want you to understand, I am now perfectly happy with Tony Romo playing at Philadelphia on Sunday. In fact, I'm ecstatic about it, because I want Dak to play a half. I want him to play the whole first half. And I want Tony Romo to play the whole second half because now he can be no threat to Dak Prescott, after Dak Prescott made Jerry Jones eat all of his words. And he shut up Jerry Jones with two straight, big-stage, dominant, national-TV performances against division-leading teams with pretty-to-very-good defenses.

Way to go, Dak Prescott. Game over, Tony Romo. ... But in the end, I want to see Tony Romo at least prepare himself somewhat, thrown into the Philly fire, to get ready to be the emergency quarterback.

SHARPE: I'm very pleased with this decision to get Tony into the ballgame. Let him get his feet wet, because contrary to what Jerry thinks, scout team is one thing, but you get to script what what you want Tony to throw into. You get to script how it's going to play out. You get into a real game, you might think — but they might throw you a curveball. So they might give you a different front and a different coverage than what you're used to seeing on first, second, third down. So I think this is a good move by the Cowboys to get Tony some game-time action, because it's been, like you said, 13 months since he played in a meaningful ball game.