Back injury keeps Tony Romo out against Cardinals

The Dallas Cowboys are about to learn if they are good enough to win without quarterback Tony Romo.

The back injury the Cowboys' quarterback suffered Monday night against Washington will keep him out of Sunday's game against the blitz-happy Arizona Cardinals, the NFL Network reported Sunday morning. Though the Cowboys tried to downplay the severity of Romo's injury throughout the week, the combination of pain and the risk of further injury appear to have been too much for Romo.

But if there is any team that should be prepared to play its backup quarterback, it is the Cowboys.

With Romo spending his offseason recovering from surgery to fix a disc issue in his back, backup quarterback Brandon Weeden handled nearly all of the first-team snaps in spring practices as well as in minicamps in early June. With the Cowboys choosing to limit Romo's work in training camp, Weeden spent valuable practice time in Oxnard, Calif. running the starting offense.

And even throughout the first half of the regular season, Romo has been held out of at least one practice a week, giving Weeden time to work with receivers Dez Bryant and Terrance Williams and tight end Jason Witten, with running back DeMarco Murray and the starting offensive line.

The problem when most teams switch to a backup quarterback, especially in case of a sudden injury, is the lack of work that backup has gotten within the team's own offense. The timing and the chemistry is often missing.

So the one thing the Cowboys can feel comfortable about is that Weeden has at least gotten the work.

But Weeden is not Romo.

He arrived in Dallas this offseason needing to rebuild his career after a rough two years, most of it as a starter, with the Cleveland Browns. And now he'll get his first start with the Cowboys against a Cardinals team full of confidence after a win last week against Philadelphia and looking to pull further away from the rest of the NFC West.

The recipe here for the Cowboys to win Sunday won't be to put it all on Weeden. It was baffling late in Monday's game, with Washington blitzing and Romo clearly feeling uncomfortable, why the Cowboys were choosing to pass. To beat the Cardinals without Romo, Dallas needs to rely on running back DeMarco Murray. Trust the running game. Trust the offensive line.

After all, wasn't that the way the Cowboys raced to a five-game winning streak last month?