ARLINGTON, Texas – Just a day away from his departure to camp, head coach Jason Garrett is having trouble holding his excitement for the start of a new season.
The one that ended last year included a bevy of injuries to key contributors on both sides of the ball, but Garrett confirmed Thursday that the beginning of this preseason should include the return of most of those injured players.
"Everybody seems ready to go, and really the injured guys from the season who worked through the offseason made great progress in their rehab," Garrett said. "Everybody has been going 100 miles per hour to get themselves right."
One key player who hasn't been involved on the field this offseason is Tony Romo, but that will change this weekend.
"Yeah, we believe Tony will be ready to play. It seems like he's in good shape," Garrett said. "He's getting himself ready to go. A lot of different guys have different training techniques getting themselves ready for training camp. Tony works very hard. He's worked very hard in his rehab coming back from the micro procedure that he had in the spring. He's excited and ready to go."
Romo at least stayed healthy throughout the majority of the 2012 campaign, unlike DeMarcus Ware, who underwent offseason shoulder surgery and also dealt with an elbow injury at the end of the year.
"We'll just see how he is," Garrett said. "He made great progress in the offseason. He was involved in a lot of the individual drills that we did throughout the OTAs and the minicamp. We just kept him out of the more competitive 11-on-11 situations. So he's made great progress coming off the injuries from last year."
Garrett said the trainers and coaches will be smart going forward regarding key players like Ware who are coming off injuries. He said the team hasn't sustained any injuries since the end of training camp. [embedded_ad]
"We'll do the conditioning test on Day 1 of training camp and see where they are physically after that and make some decisions," Garrett said. "We have a plan for each of those guys going into it, based on what their injury has been, different start dates for some guys, different ways to work back into training camp and work back into football."
Garrett talks constantly about having the right makeup on the team. He said he feels like the Cowboys have the right people on staff and the right personnel on the field to start the season and compete for a championship. Needless to say, he's excited to get started.
"We worked really hard in the offseason, had a great offseason, and then you get away from football for a little bit and you start itching," he said. "I think we all are, as players and coaches, itching to get back to work. The plane departs for Oxnard tomorrow at 4 o'clock. We're excited to be on it."
