Tony Romo’s Dallas Cowboys career will always be remembered for what-ifs, the broken collarbones, the playoff heartbreaks that never quite broke his way. Dallas has had no shortage of “nearly” stories over the years, from Dez Bryant’s non-catch to Romo’s own string of injury-riddled Januarys. But while fans have long debated which moment hurt the most, Romo himself has now pointed to something else entirely. And it isn’t a game at all.

“I’m not a guy with big regrets, I guess you could say,” Tony Romo said on Pardon My Take. “The only regret I guess I would have is that… my job was to bring a Super Bowl to Dallas, and I didn’t do it. So that always sticks with me a little bit. Because you give your whole body, heart, soul, everything into it.”

Back in 2003, Romo wasn’t picked by a single team in the NFL Draft. Not one call, not one name. But even before things got official, Sean Payton, then an assistant head coach with Dallas, kept telling him the Cowboys wanted him. The Denver Broncos’ Mike Shanahan was chasing him hard too. In the end, Romo signed with Dallas as an undrafted free agent, and that decision ended up shaping his entire career.

Years later, Romo revealed that there was a point when he considered leaving Dallas to chase a Super Bowl elsewhere. He admitted winning it all was the whole point of playing. But something about doing it away from Dallas never sat right with him.

“But at the end it was like… I could go somewhere else and do it,” Romo added. “Because I was like, I gotta win a Super Bowl. It’s literally what you play the game for. Nothing else matters,” Romo said. “And it just was like… but would that be the same? If I went somewhere else and did it?”

Romo went on to post a 78-49-0 record as Dallas’s starter. Over his 13 years with the Cowboys, he recorded over 34,000 yards and 248 touchdowns, backed by a strong 97.1 passer rating. He made four Pro Bowls, and 2014 was arguably his best season, leading the league in both passer rating and completion percentage.

Yet for all that production, the Cowboys reached the playoffs just four times with him under center and never got past the Divisional Round, winning only two postseason games total with a 2-4 record. He explained why walking away never felt right, even as injuries piled up.

“Because at that point I’d known the game at such a high level,” Romo said. “My last 20, 25 games, we were pretty successful. When healthy. But I was getting injured more often. Body breaks down in some ways through the years….I think just… it was as simple as it just wouldn’t feel as… important… it would be important to me, but it was for the people I was around. All the fans that we had.”

Tony Romo had plenty of big moments as Dallas’s quarterback, but a Super Bowl ring is the one thing that never made it into his trophy case. These days, though, he’s facing a different kind of pressure, one that comes from the broadcast booth instead of the field.

Tony Romo opens up on how he handles the criticism

After retiring from the NFL, Romo has now exchanged his jersey for a headset and serves as the lead NFL analyst at CBS Sports alongside Jim Nantz. He became an immediate success story after joining CBS in 2017; however, it is this very same quick wit that initially made him popular that has been receiving some criticism in recent times.

Let us take the instance of the broadcast of the Bills and Jaguars game last season, where Romo was criticized by the viewers for strange noises and lackluster comments at crucial times of the game. How did he manage to deal with all of this? Well, Romo answered this question himself on the Pardon My Take podcast.

“You’re live on air for three, three and a half hours every week,” he said on PMT, according to Awful Announcing. “It’s like you’re probably going to do something right. I mean, we do more right than wrong; otherwise, you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in. But I think, like anything, you’re going to do something wrong. I just always want — in the back of your brain you’re literally thinking about you guys watching at home, and it’s like, what would I want?”

Turns out, even years removed from the field, Romo’s still chasing the same thing he always was, getting it right for the people watching at home.