It's Tony Romo or bust for the Denver Broncos

Every year as the NFL Draft approaches, teams fall all over themselves in search of the next great quarterback. They trade away their assets for a chance to bring in the Jared Goffs and Robert Griffins of the world in hopes that they may find themselves with a John Elway, a guy who spends his entire career with the franchise, takes the team to multiple championships and brings multiple Lombardis to the city.

There’s just one problem; the franchise doesn’t usually get a John Elway with that selection. What they usually get is an obligation to try and develop a quarterback who they eventually decide can’t get it done at the highest level and move on, putting their franchise in a precarious position. A miss on an early first-round pick can set a franchise back, but a miss on an early first-round pick at quarterback can set it back miles.

In the end, though, teams have to continue to try to find the next franchise QB because quarterbacks win in this league and good ones don’t just become available randomly… Well, usually they don’t.

Once in a while, for one reason or another, a big-time quarterback becomes available to the market, and usually, it’s because of that obsession with finding the next big thing. We saw it happen when the Indianapolis Colts drafted Andrew Luck, and we’re likely to see it happen again this season. The Dallas Cowboys believe they’ve found their next great in Dak Prescott and all signs point to the franchise being willing to part ways with a quarterback who has already proved himself, Tony Romo.

Over the course of his career, which began in 2004, Romo has compiled the fourth-best quarterback rating in National Football League history, trailing only Aaron Rogers, Russell Wilson and Super Bowl LI MVP Tom Brady in the category. The veteran QB has compiled more than 34,000 yards in his career while completing more than 65 percent of his passes and establishing a touchdown-to-interception ratio better than 2-to-1. There is no guessing, hoping or predicting that Tony Romo is good; he’s already there.

If the Denver Broncos’ goal is to win a championship in 2017, they must pursue Tony Romo. Why? It’s plain and simple; Tony Romo gives the Broncos a better chance at winning football games than Paxton Lynch or Trevor Siemian. Period.

The Orange & Blue currently have a roster of Super-Bowl caliber players, but this type of roster doesn’t last forever. With the way it’s currently constructed, the franchise simply doesn’t have time to sit back and develop a quarterback and big-time development is necessary for both quarterbacks currently on the roster. When the defense is built to win now and the offense is built to win later you get—well—you get the 2016 Denver Broncos. A frustrated bunch, backed by a frustrated fanbase.

The 2015 season, while magical, offered an outlier in terms of success in the NFL. So often we fall in love with the idea that a Super Bowl champion and their makeup signifies a changing of the guard when they do it differently. Sometimes, though, a team just gets the necessary breaks and bounces to do it their own way. The Super Bowl 50 champions were not the new rule; they were the exception.

You need a big-time quarterback to get it done in this league. If you take a mediocre Peyton Manning out of the equation, the last ten Super Bowl champions have been led by Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, Joe Flacco, Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning and a prime Peyton Manning.

Even if you determine Joe Flacco to be the worst of that bunch, you agree that he is better than what the Broncos have on their roster now. Maybe you consider Flacco to be in the second tier of NFL QBs; maybe you consider him to fit in the same tier as Tony Romo, what’s clear is he, just as Romo is, is a clear cut above what is currently available to Denver.

The Broncos experimented with the idea they thought they had accidentally proven in 2015, the hypothesis being that you don’t need a great quarterback ton win a championship in the NFL. Once the sample size was expanded, what the experiment proved was that while you may not always need elite performance out of the quarterback, you do need veteran leadership and you do need savviness at the line of scrimmage. What the experiment proved is that without a strong presence under center the Denver Broncos aren’t even a playoff team.

Tony Romo is not the coup that Peyton Manning was, but he’s the closest the team can get to that in 2017. He’s not a free agent, but the Broncos have the assets and the cap room to acquire him. He’s not young and has yet to get it done on the biggest stage, but he could still theoretically tie John Elway as the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl for the Broncos.

What Tony Romo is, is the piece that takes the Broncos from playoff contender to Super Bowl contender.

John Elway’s famous saying is that the Broncos don’t just want to win now, they want to win from now on. To do that, you still have to win now.

Tony Romo gives the Denver Broncos the best chance to do that.