Looking back on his time with the Cowboys, the former star quarterback regrets the team’s poor playoff record.

From 2003 to 2016, Tony Romo was the face of the Dallas Cowboys as their quarterback.

However, one blemish remains on his career: He was never able to lead the Texas franchise to the Super Bowl. That is exactly what the 46-year-old regrets, as he recently explained on the podcast “Pardon My Take.”

“I’m not someone who regrets big things, I’d say,” the once-undrafted free agent explained about his time with the Cowboys, “my only regret would probably be that it was my job to bring the Super Bowl to Dallas, and I didn’t manage to do it.”

Romo: “It’s still kind of on my mind”

The former NFL star also said: “It does bother me a little bit because you give everything—body, heart, soul, just everything—and you just wanted it for all the fans, for the Jones family, for everyone around you.”

He’s particularly haunted by the missed Super Bowl triumph with Dallas, “because I had the opportunity and just couldn’t capitalize on it. So that part of it is still kind of there.”

Romo took over as the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the 2006 season and held that position for nearly ten years. Due to several collarbone injuries, he was then sidelined almost entirely in 2015, making only four appearances.

The following year, Dak Prescott took over as the Cowboys’ starting quarterback because Romo was sidelined with a back injury.

Retirement Instead of a Fresh Start: “I Was Getting Injured More and More Often”

Those injuries were ultimately the reason Romo decided to end his career in 2017. “As you get older, your body just can’t keep up anymore,” he explained regarding this decision. Especially since he would no longer have been able to fulfill his dream of winning the Super Bowl in Dallas.

“I just asked myself: Would it be the same if I made it somewhere else? Because at that point, I knew the game at such a high level. In my last 20 or 25 games, we were pretty successful as long as I was healthy, but I was getting injured more and more often,” he said, outlining his decision-making process leading up to his eventual retirement.

Not least out of consideration for his family, he therefore decided to call it quits. “I think it was just that it wouldn’t have felt as important anymore,” Romo said about a possible fresh start with another franchise, “it would have been important to me personally, but it was about the people around me and all our fans.”