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Tony Romo reportedly wants to play for Broncos next season

Sunday’s Cowboys-Packers game could be the final one for Tony Romo in a Dallas uniform. His tenure as the team’s starting quarterback ended ...

Sunday’s Cowboys-Packers game could be the final one for Tony Romo in a Dallas uniform. His tenure as the team’s starting quarterback ended weeks ago, as even he acknowledged, and speculation has swirled over where Romo might play next.

According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, the four-time Pro Bowler’s preference is to join the Broncos. That would make a lot of sense for him and Denver, but the catch, according to Rapoport, is that the team does not want to acquire Romo in a trade.

It sounds like the Broncos want to have their cake and eat it, too, getting Romo without giving up anything to the Cowboys in return. That may prove impossible, as Dallas is well aware of the highly valuable commodity of which it is in possession, given the NFL’s perpetual shortage of quality starting quarterbacks.

However, holding on to Romo while waiting for just the perfect moment to deal him to another team that suddenly finds itself with a need at his position, as the Eagles did in trading Sam Bradford to the Vikings just before the regular season started, could prove problematic for the Cowboys. Beginning with offseason training activities in the spring, every day that Romo spends with the team will provide opportunities for reporters to ask him, owner Jerry Jones and everyone else in Dallas how they feel about the awkward situation.

Romo, who graciously turned the quarterbacking reins over to rookie Dak Prescott in November, would surely be upset with such a hardball strategy by his longtime team. In addition, Romo is close with Jones, who may feel that, as matter of courtesy and respect, he owes it to the 36-year-old to simply release him and let him choose his own team. Another possibility is that Dallas hangs on to Romo, as a valuable and well-paid insurance policy, but again, Jones risks tension in his locker room.

In 2012, the Colts released Peyton Manning, knowing that they were set to draft Andrew Luck with the No. 1 overall pick. Another factor in that decision was that Indianapolis had salary-cap issues while Manning was set to make a huge amount of money (he was due a $28 million roster bonus), which also made him nearly impossible to trade.

Of course, once Manning was released, he eventually landed with the Broncos, which worked out very well for everyone in Denver. Coming off multiple neck surgeries, the decorated quarterback not only rewrote the record book but won a Super Bowl in February 2015.

It’s not hard to see a similar dynamic playing with Romo, who recovered this season from a back injury, not the first of his career. The Broncos still have a terrific defense, talent at wide receiver and running back and, just as importantly, a potential need at his position and the ability to absorb a hefty contract.

Denver drafted a quarterback, Memphis’s Paxton Lynch, in the first round last year, but it gave the bulk of the starts this past season to an unheralded second-year player, Trevor Siemian. The Northwestern product acquitted himself respectably, but he led a struggling offense that was called out by members of the Broncos’ defense, and there is little doubt that a healthy Romo would represent an upgrade, at least for a couple of seasons.

Given that Siemian and Lynch are both playing on rookie contracts, the Broncos should be able to accommodate Romo’s salary, which will be $14 million next year, after which he will have two more seasons left on a six-year, $108 million contract. The website Spotrac lists Denver as having $38,410,833 in 2017 salary-cap space, and teams can usually find ways of freeing up more room when necessary.

The Denver Post’s Mark Kiszla recently asked in a column advocating the acquisition of Romo, “Can Denver really afford to waste another year of this championship defense with a young quarterback not ready for prime time? Gary Kubiak tried that bluff this year, and it ended with ugly shouting in a locker room divided by the frustration of seven losses.”

Thus the Broncos may well choose to pony up (as it were) for Romo’s services, in the form of something like a third-round draft pick. That seems like a perfectly reasonable price to pay in the hopes that Romo can produce anything like the magic that Manning did, and it sounds like a scenario that the veteran quarterback himself would embrace.

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