OXNARD, Calif. – It wasn't exactly secret information, but Tony Romo confirmed his troubles playing with his convalescing back injuries at times last season.
"It depended on the game I guess. Early in the year I wasn't able to do certain things," Romo said. "I could still cut it, but there's different forms of cutting it and on top of it there's different techniques to cutting it."
It's easy to think back to games last year – Week 1 against San Francisco and Week 2 against Tennessee come to mind – where Romo appeared hindered or limited by his surgically repaired back. Up until the Cowboys got into the routine of giving him added rest to rehab the injury, he admitted his difficulties in certain game situations.
"There's the one where you're fundamentally with a strong base where you're able to go through three, four progressions without a ton of movement with your lower body," he said. "Then there's other ones where it's like 'I'm going to have to move my lower body and get my body weight through this to get the ball there.' So I almost have to put myself in position to guess and throw it instead of being quiet with your base and going through all the progressions."
With a full, healthy offseason to strengthen his back, Romo said he's in a much better place this summer than he was at the start of last season. It remains to be seen what his practice schedule will look like as training camp goes along, not to mention the season. He took a veteran's day on Wednesday, and Cowboys coach Jason Garrett has said there's constant communication about his workload.
"You go out and you have to figure out where that is going to be during camp," Romo said. "You don't throw and do everything as much at any other point during the year as you do in this month so you have to make sure you're always doing things the right way to give yourself the best chance to go out on the field, and I've been able to do that."
