In 2012, the NFL developed short-term injured reserve, which allows teams to place an injured player on the shelf for a period of at least six weeks. Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo would seem to be an ideal candidate for the list, as his expected recovery time from a broken vertebra is 6-10 weeks, but owner Jerry Jones doesn't plan on putting Romo on IR.
"I think that medicine can fail you when you start really creating these bright lines, and we found that over the years when they say it takes six weeks; it takes this," Jones said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan about Romo's recovery timetable. “We learned that with (Jason) Witten (and his spleen injury). In his case, it was supposed to be a length of time and turns out it wasn’t. So some of these kinds of things that have been around, these traditional healing times aren’t necessarily as bright lined as you might like them to be."
DIAMOND: Forget everything you know about Dak Prescott
Basically, Jones believes if there's even a slight chance Romo can recover quickly from his compression fracture of the L1 vertebra, he's willing to carry the quarterback on the 53-man roster. It would seem foolish not to take advantage of the short-term IR, but Jones believes it's not worth over-analyzing.
"You don't have to spend a lot of time going over and kind of circumcising the mosquito," he said. "You don’t have to do that over there on him because you look back over on the other side that caused you to make the decision, and there’s nobody good enough to take that spot to give you a chance for that if he can come back."
In the meantime, rookie quarterback Dak Prescott will take over for Dallas with veteran Mark Sanchez backing him up. Prescott has impressed this preseason, and while the Cowboys are high on him, Jones doesn't plan on moving away from Romo anytime soon.
