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Perhaps no position in professional sports is as heavily scrutinized as the quarterback in football – win and you get all the glory, but lose and the burden of blame falls squarely on your shoulders. During the 21st century, perhaps no two quarterbacks have been as heavily criticized during their playing days as Jay Cutler and Tony Romo – though each put up prolific passing numbers in his prime, neither could guide their teams to much postseason success and thus were constantly under the microscope for perceived shortcomings. With both quarterbacks having retired from the NFL as players and made their way into the broadcasting booth, let us look back on the parallel careers of these much-maligned signal-callers and consider:
Who was better – Jay Cutler or Tony Romo?
The Beginning
Following their multi-sport days growing up, both Cutler and Romo excelled as college quarterbacks, though the former parlayed that success into being a first-round draft pick, whereas the latter went undrafted and had to fight and claw his way onto an NFL roster.
Growing up in Indiana, Cutler excelled in football, basketball, and baseball – on the gridiron, he played quarterback on offense and safety on defense, leading his high school to a state championship and earning First Team All-State honors as a senior. Upon high school graduation, he attended Vanderbilt University and was a four-year starter who started all 45 games he played for the Commodores (a school record). By his senior season, Cutler was a First Team All-Southeastern Conference (SEC) selection and a finalist for the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, the Davey O’Brien Award, the Manning Award, and the Sammy Baugh Trophy, and had also set school records for total offense and touchdowns. As a result, the Denver Broncos moved up in the 2006 NFL Draft to select Cutler 11th overall in the first round; as a rookie, he replaced incumbent quarterback Jake Plummer midway through the year and would complete 59.1% of his passes for 1,001 yards and 9 touchdowns vs. 5 interceptions, good for an 88.5 QB rating while leading Denver to a 2-3 record.
Meanwhile, Romo was a Navy brat who was born in San Diego, California on the naval base, but later grew up in Wisconsin. Like Cutler, he was a multi-sport star in football, basketball, golf, and tennis, though was not heavily recruited for football and would attend Division I-AA school Eastern Illinois. Nevertheless, he was a 3x First Team All-Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) selection, a 3x OVC Player of the Year and won the Walter Payton Award as the top Division I-AA football player while setting a number of school passing records and leading the Panthers to a pair of conference titles. Despite being a small school standout, Romo went undrafted in 2003 and would sign as a free agent with the Dallas Cowboys, though he did not attempt a single regular season pass in his first three seasons (2003-2005) while backing up veteran quarterbacks such as Quincy Carter, Vinny Testaverde, and Drew Bledsoe.
Career Comparison
Once firmly entrenched as starting quarterbacks, Cutler and Romo were both productive signal-callers for nearly a decade, though individual statistical success did not always translate into winning teams (or an escape from criticism).
In his first full season as Denver’s starting quarterback, Cutler was solid but unspectacular, completing 63.6% of his passes for 3,497 yards and 20 touchdowns vs. 14 interceptions (88.1 QB rating) while leading the team to a mediocre 7-9 record. The following year, the Broncos were still basically a .500 team (8-8) in 2008, but a growing rapport with star wide receiver Brandon Marshall resulted in the best statistical season of Cutler’s career and his only Pro Bowl selection: a career-high 4,526 yards on 62.3% passing for 25 touchdowns vs. 18 interceptions, equating to an 86.0 QB rating. However, with a new management regime in place, Cutler asked the team for a trade and was subsequently dealt to the Chicago Bears along with a 2009 fifth-round draft pick for fellow quarterback Kyle Orton, first and third-round picks in 2009, and a first-round draft pick in 2010.
Cutler would have an up-and-down tenure in Chicago – in his first year with the team in 2009, he threw for 3,666 yards and 27 touchdowns, but led the NFL with a career-high 26 interceptions; nevertheless, as a follow-up, he guided the Bears to a 10-5 record in 2010 (their best record under Cutler’s leadership) and tossed 23 touchdowns vs. 16 interceptions. From there, things seemed to be on the upswing, as Cutler led Chicago to a 7-3 record to start the 2011 season, but a thumb injury ended his season prematurely. Ahead of the 2012 campaign, he was reunited with his former favorite receiver Brandon Marshall (who had been acquired from the Miami Dolphins via trade) and once again guided the team to a 10-5 record: 58.8% completion rate for 3,033 yards and 19 touchdowns against 14 interceptions for an 81.3 QB rating.
As it turns out, 2012 would be the last winning season of Cutler’s career. Limited to 11 games played in 2013, he had his highest yardage total as a Bear in 2014 (3,812 passing yards) with a career-best 28 touchdowns, but again led the league with 18 interceptions as Chicago floundered to a 5-10 record. Statistically, he put together another strong season in 2015 (64.4% of passes completed for 3,659 yards with 21 touchdowns vs. 11 interceptions for a career-high 92.3 QB rating), but Chicago was only 6-9 with Cutler under center. Finally, after a frustrating 2016 season in which a labrum injury limited him to just five games played, Cutler retired from the NFL at age 33; however, with Ryan Tannehill going down with a season-ending injury in the preseason in 2017, he was lured out of retirement by the Dolphins and ended up starting 14 games, going 6-8 and passing for 2,666 yards with 19 touchdowns and 14 interceptions (80.8 QB rating). With no further assurances of a starting gig, Cutler retired this time for good following one season in Miami.
Romo finally got his chance to start midway through the 2006 season, replacing the aging Bledsoe; he went on to earn the first of four Pro Bowl selections with 2,903 passing yards on 65.3% passing with 19 touchdowns vs. 13 interceptions (95.1 QB rating) while leading the Cowboys to a 6-4 record. Blessed with talented pass-catchers in Dallas like Terrell Owens, Dez Bryant, and Jason Witten, he would be an effective starter for nearly a decade – in his first full season at the helm, Romo was once again a Pro Bowler in 2007 with 4,211 passing yards (on 64.4% passing) with a career-high 36 touchdowns vs. 19 interceptions, good for a 97.4 QB rating and a career-best 13-3 record as a starter. This was followed by another strong 2008 season in which he threw for 3,448 yards and 26 touchdowns vs. 14 interceptions on a 61.3% completion rate, good for a 91.4 QB rating and an 8-5 record for the Cowboys.
As he entered his prime, Romo would have some of his most statistically productive years as a quarterback. He made another Pro Bowl in 2009 on the strength of 63.1% passing for 4,483 yards, 26 touchdowns, and only 9 interceptions (97.6 QB rating), leading Dallas to an 11-5 record in the process. Unfortunately, the next year, he broke his left clavicle during an October Monday Night Football game and would miss the rest of the season. Despite the injury, Romo quickly bounced back with two straight 4,000-yard seasons, though the Cowboys were a disappointing 8-8 both years:
- 2011: 4,184 yards on 66.3% passing with 31 touchdowns and 10 interceptions for a 102.5 QB rating
- 2012: a career-high 4,903 yards on 65.6% passing with 28 touchdowns, but a league-high 19 interceptions, for a 90. 5 QB rating
Though he would never reach the 4,000 yard mark again, Romo remained an elite quarterback for a couple more years. In 2013, he passed for 3,828 yards and again tossed 30+ touchdowns (31) with just 10 interceptions; then, in 2014, he had his final Pro Bowl season, was a Second Team All-Pro selection, and finished third for MVP (behind Aaron Rodgers and J.J. Watt) by leading the league with a 69.9% completion percentage for 3,705 yards and 34 touchdowns vs. 9 interceptions, good for a league-leading 113.2 QB rating and an outstanding 12-3 record as a starter. However, this was his last full season as a starter – he suffered a broken collarbone in 2015 and started just four games; trying to make a comeback in 2016, he again suffered an injury in the preseason, which led to the proverbial “passing of the torch” to Dak Prescott as the Cowboys’ starting quarterback – Romo only threw four total passes in 2016 (with his last pass being a touchdown) and retired after the season at age 36 as Dallas’ career leader in passing yards and touchdowns.
Technically speaking, Romo spent two more seasons in the NFL than Cutler, but the actual game difference is only three total games due to the former’s early years buried on Dallas’ depth chart. Thus, across a nearly identical number of games played, Cutler passed for more yards, but Romo had the better completion percentage with more touchdowns and fewer interceptions. In fact, Romo was generally more prolific as a starter – both passed for 3,000+ yards 7x, but Romo has the edge in 4,000-yard seasons (4x vs. 1x) and 20-touchdown campaigns (7 to 6, including a 4 to 0 lead in 30-touchdown performances), thus resulting in a 4 vs. 1 advantage in Pro Bowl selections (plus a Second Team All-Pro nod). Per-game-wise, the same general trends apply: 230 passing yards with 1.48 touchdowns vs. 1.05 interceptions for Cutler across 153 regular season games vs. 219 passing yards with 1.59 touchdowns vs. 0.75 interceptions for Romo across 156 regular season games. Perhaps the biggest disparity between the two quarterbacks is win-loss record: whereas Romo had above a 60% winning percentage as a starting quarterback, Cutler was actually sub-.500 for his career; ultimately, both players had long and productive NFL careers, but fall shy of the Hall of Fame.
Regular Season Statistics
| Jay Cutler | Player | Tony Romo |
| 12 (2006-2017) | Seasons | 14 (2003-2016) |
| 153 | Games Played | 156 |
| 3,048 | Completions | 2,829 |
| 4,920 | Attempts | 4,335 |
| 35,133 | Passing Yards | 34,183 |
| 62.0% | Completion % | 65.3% |
| 227 | Passing Touchdowns | 248 |
| 160 | Interceptions | 117 |
| 85.3 | QB Rating | 97.1 |
| 74-79 (48.4%) | Starting QB Record | 78-49 (61.4%) |
| 1x | Pro Bowls | 4x |
| – | All-Pro | – |
| – | MVP | – |
| – | Super Bowls | – |
| – | Other Awards | – |
| – | Hall of Fame Induction | – |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
Even in their most productive years as starting quarterbacks, those numbers rarely resulted in postseason success, often instead ending in frustrating losses (or not even being in the playoffs in the first place).
In his only career postseason trip in 2010, Cutler led the Bears to a 35-24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in the Divisional Round, completing 15 of 28 passes for 274 yards and 2 touchdowns, along with 43 rushing yards and 2 touchdowns on the ground; however, in a 21-14 NFC Championship loss to Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, he was only 6 of 14 for 80 yards and an interception before injuring his knee and missing most of the second half.
Though Romo guided the Cowboys to four playoff appearances during his time as a starter (each coinciding with a Pro Bowl year), he could never quite get the team over the proverbial hump and never advanced the team past the Divisional Round (three losses). Ironically, his most famous playoff moment came in a Wildcard loss to the Seattle Seahawks during the 2006 season – down 21-20 with a little over a minute left, Romo was the holder on a potential 19-yard game-winning field goal, but fumbled the snap and tried to run it in for a touchdown, though was ultimately stopped short.
Playoff Statistics
| Jay Cutler | Player | Tony Romo |
| 2 | Games Played | 6 |
| 21 | Completions | 114 |
| 42 | Attempts | 185 |
| 354 | Passing Yards | 1,316 |
| 50.0% | Completion % | 61.6% |
| 2 | Passing Touchdowns | 8 |
| 1 | Interceptions | 2 |
| 84.8 | QB Rating | 93.0 |
| 1-1 (50.0%) | Starting QB Record | 2-4 (33.3%) |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
Every athlete goes through a natural career lifecycle, from starting off as a rookie to reaching peak years of performance and finally, declining into the inevitable retirement due to a combination of age and/or injury; Cutler actually managed to start for most of his dozen years in the league, whereas Romo was a backup early on and then benched for Prescott at the very end of his playing days. For Hall of Fame caliber players across sports, I like to look at a concept I call a “decade of dominance.” The thinking behind this is that for most Hall of Fame type careers, there are roughly 10 great seasons that define an athlete (this idea is embodied in a sense by the NFL’s All-Decade teams), though due to injury or other factors, they might not be 10 consecutive years.
Decade of Dominance
| Jay Cutler | Player | Tony Romo |
| 2007-2015, 2017 | Decade of Dominance | 2006-2015 |
| 143 | Games Played | 133 |
| 2,886 | Completions | 2,826 |
| 4,646 | Attempts | 4,331 |
| 33,073 | Passing Yards | 34,154 |
| 62.1% | Completion % | 65.3% |
| 214 | Passing Touchdowns | 247 |
| 150 | Interceptions | 117 |
| 85.4 | QB Rating | 97.1 |
| 71-72 (49.7%) | Starting QB Record | 78-49 (61.4%) |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
Again, the same comparisons are valid across the decades of dominance – more passing yards for Cutler, but Romo was generally the more efficient passer with better decision-making, ultimately leading to better team success.
My Thoughts
Much maligned as they were, let us not forget that Jay Cutler and Tony Romo were actually effective starting quarterbacks in the NFL for roughly a decade apiece, no small feat in itself. Between the two, however, I think the choice is fairly obvious: Cutler was for the most part a slightly above average quarterback (i.e. the epitome of a .500 quarterback), whereas at his peak, Romo was arguably one of the top five signal-callers in the league. Moreover, from a statistical perspective, the latter was a much more efficient passer and took better care of the ball (i.e. more touchdowns, fewer interceptions) while making the Cowboys contenders year in and year out, despite ultimately falling short; though Dak Prescott may have something to say about this when all is said and done, Romo is currently in my view the third-best quarterback in Dallas history behind only Hall of Famers Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman. Though he himself is not quite a Hall of Famer to me, it is nevertheless quite the feat that Romo made a career for himself as one of the best undrafted players in NFL history (probably right outside the top 10).
Thus, after weighing their careers against each other in terms of statistics, achievements, and impact, the winner of this faceoff is:
Tony Romo
As always, vote for your choice and leave your thoughts and comments below.
Further Reading
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