Seattle scribes quiz Tony Romo

Tony Romo blew off the Valley Ranch media during this short week of preparation. But he did hold a conference call with the Seattle media yesterday.

The subject of the Seattle Slip came up, and Romo waxed philosophically while making it clear that he doesn't sit up at night and worry about the wacky ending of his playoff debut.

Follow the jump to read that and the rest of the thrilling transcript.

(On the Thanksgiving game routine and what advantages a game early in the week might have...) "Well, I think it's just like a Thursday night game for a lot of teams when they get those games. The one benefit sometimes is you get a little bit more time; if you can get through the game without a lot of injuries, you can a lot of people healed up for the next week and for the weeks to come. In a small sense, you get a little benefit there, but I think if you do have some injuries, it also hurts you because you don't get people to get back sometimes for that game."

(On whether the Cowboys specifically have an advantage because they're used to playing the Thanksgiving game every year...) "I don't know. Honestly, each coach is different. Some coaches like to work you hard throughout the week, others like to have walk-through stuff. There's no one thing that the Cowboys organization has done every year in, year out. I think that whatever coach you have at the time, he's going to have a belief in something and that's what you're going to do. I know we've gotten our butt kicked on Thanksgiving and I know we've won some big games, too. Each year's different."

(On how the team has dealt with the ups and downs and the Super Bowl expectations...) "We really don't deal with that. We just think about the next game now. We feel like we're in a playoff game every week now at this time of the year. The last couple of weeks, we've had to approach it that way. We're going to give our best efforts going forward. This team understands that our back is against the wall and we need to win. We're going to go out there and give it everything we've got this week."

(On how much the fumbled snap against the Seahawks affected or changed him in retrospect...) "I don't know that it did much in that sense. I just think you want to win, and you're not always going to perform the way you want to out on the athletic field. But you know, you just go back to work and you try to keep stacking days together, and just try and be as good as you can be. You never know how good that can be. Some of us have a higher plateau than others, and some people, you max out. But I do know that if you keep working hard, you'll be able to get the most out of your potential. You never really know what that is until you do it. You just keep doing that."

(On whether it was tough having to wait so long to play again after that game...) "I don't know. For me, it was my first half of a season, so I didn't know what the heck was going on at the time, I was just kind of playing football."

(On how his finger is doing...) "It's getting a lot better. Each day, each week, the passes...I feel like I could probably get to a point where [I could be] playing without the split this week. I don't know if the trainers and doctors are going to let me, but I'm getting pretty close. I'd like to think that it'll be almost all the way healed this weekend, if not by Thursday."

(On whether he feels like he can make all his throws now with his finger and the splint...) "Yeah. I can definitely put it to where I want to on the field. It's just a matter of, with the splint on, every once in a blue moon, it'll pop up and affect the throw a little bit. But other than that, it's been good."

(On whether he feels as if the team has turned a corner winning the last few games after having an inconsistent start...) "No, we haven't turned any corner. We're still battling for our lives here, trying to get into the playoffs. Like I said, our backs are against the wall. It's time to continue playing at a high level. We've been fortunate enough the last couple weeks to come out and play good football and we have to do that again this week. This is going to be a good test on a short week against a club that looks a lot better on film than their record indicates."

(On how he would describe Julius Jones as a running back in Dallas...) "A good one. When he first came in here, he really was the guy for a while. He carried the load of the offense there for a while."

(On how Marion Barber coming in affected Jones...) "I don't know. I couldn't speculate on that. I know Julius is a great guy, he's a great teammate. It's going to be tough on any competitor when you're splitting carries or time, I think. But if I know Julius, he'll be ready to go this week. He'll be fired up. It'll be fun to see him and talk to see how things are going."

(On whether he thinks the Giants are catchable in the playoff race...) "Oh, we're not ruling out anything. We're just going to keep playing football. Hopefully we can stack a few wins together and come out and play good football this weekend. You never know how this thing's going to shape out in the end. But it'll be an exciting finish, regardless, to the season."

(On how important it was for Terrell Owens to be as involved in the offense as he was this past week...) "I don't know. You'd have to ask him that. I throw it to the guy I think is open, and he was open last week a bunch, so I tried to throw him the ball. Sometimes you hit him, sometimes you don't."

(On how he approaches a game against a team like Seattle...) "Well, like I said, they look a lot better on film than their record indicates. I know their defense actually looks pretty darn good. I wasn't sure going in what to expect a little bit, but we got a bigger test than I had anticipated going into this week. I think that this will be a game that will definitely test us. We're not going to just move the ball up and down the field on these guys. We're going to have to do some good things to probably put some points on the board this week."

(On whether he individually or the team as a whole does anything for Thanksgiving...) "Honestly, no. No, we really don't. We're so used to playing on Thursday, it's a tough deal just because you got to prepare in such a short week that you're trying to put everything into a small amount of time. There's not much else you can do other than prepare, and then go play the game. After that, if you got some energy, you go eat some turkey."

(On whether getting Owens the ball frees up other players on the offense...) "I'm sure defensively that mindset might happen. I think it's just what coverages they play. More than anything else...if you really want to take a guy out of the game, I think you really can for the most part. You just have to dedicate a few people to him at all times. That opens up a lot of other people, especially now that we've got Roy Williams. If you want to account for one guy, you got to watch it. We've played against that a few times now and we've gotten better at understanding what to do against teams that want to take a guy or two out of the game."

(On whether there's been more media scrutiny on the team with Adam Jones back at practice...) "There's always media scrutiny, that's nothing new."

(On whether Jones being back at practice affects the team at all...) "No. The guys understand that some guys are going to be injured for a week or two. When I was out, the train keeps moving along. You come back, and you join in with the team, and you try and get back into playing. That's just what he's doing. I think our team just keeps rolling along. He's going to add to us another good player."


Source: cowboysblog.dallasnews.com