Tony Romo's return sparked the first win for the Dallas Cowboys since September. To hear Cowboys players talk, it seemed as though Jesus walked and woke their season from the dead, Lazarus-style.
"Romo made a difference; he made a difference," defensive end Jeremy Mincey said, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "He is the savior of our season."
That's the same Jeremy Mincey who weeks ago said the Cowboys couldn't sit and wait for Romo to return to win games, because "he's not Jesus." But after losing seven straight, the quarterback's return jump-started the positive vibes throughout Dallas.
Romo even gave the pregame speech, which filled teammates' hearts with hope, confidence and inspiration.
"Outstanding. Felt it. I got chills, I tell you that," Dez Bryant said, via ESPN.com.
Romo wasn't perfect. In his first game back, however, he made throws and plays that no other Dallas quarterback could come close to completing. Romo went 18-of-28 passing for 227 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions.
"To give you an idea, if you ever want to make a picture of his positive competitive mentality, do it when he came back off a shoulder that had six fractures," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. "OK? Six. OK! And he came back, and the first thing he did was go out there and deal with that kind of rush in a driving rain.
"Now, there's no glory there. That's not big-time lights, anything. That's just big men coming down on you hard in a monsoon, trying to figure out how not to have a terrible play at the first of a ballgame. That defines him so well. He's had many defining plays. That's a defining play right there. That's fresh off of no competition for two months. So, hello!"
Hello, Tony. Nice to have you back on the field. Now we'll see if you can pull off one of the most epic runs to the playoffs in NFL history. That would be savior-type stuff.