The playoff-bound Dallas Cowboys are zooming toward the NFC's No. 1 seed.
If they lock it up prior to Week 17, will the team's starters get a breather before the postseason?
Don't bank on it.
"No, I see us more as business as usual," team owner and general manager Jerry Jones said Tuesday during his weekly radio appearance with KRLD-FM in Dallas. "What it does allow you to do is when you've got guys on the fence with injury, not push them. That would just be smart, but I don't know that you gain anything at all ... you just use good sense, just use common judgment.
"The other part of that is the obvious -- you don't want to take the edge off. A football game is a part of the personality of the team and you want that team to stay very physical as you enter these playoffs."
The utterly predictable fascination around Dallas resting its starters has nothing to do with 99.9 percent of the roster. "Will left guard Ronald Leary will get a day off?" is a question nobody is asking. It has everything to do with veteran quarterback Tony Romo taking over for wunderkind Dak Prescott.
We've seen plenty of teams sit their starting quarterbacks in Week 17 -- to mixed results come January -- but the situation with Romo is an entirely different beast.
This isn't Curtis Painter coming off the bench for a fleeting real-life experience on the gridiron. Playing Romo -- at any stage -- would open the door for waves of fresh debate and what-ifs around how Dallas handled the veteran's demotion.
By the sounds of it, Jones has little interest in re-opening those wounds.
