Tony Romo is getting up there in years, but the Cowboys aren’t dialing back the expectations whatsoever. Cowboys COO Stephen Jones says that the signal-caller is “ready to have the best year he’s ever had,” as Jon Machota of The Dallas Morning News writes. Romo turns 35 on Tuesday, but this is also the first time in two years that he isn’t coming off of a surgical procedure. Here’s more from the AFC and NFC East..
- Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy has filed a petition to have domestic violence charges officially expunged from his record, as Joseph Person of the Charlotte Observer writes. His lawyer explained that it’s a very common procedure. “Every day Americans who have misdemeanor charges dismissed file for expungement of the charges from their record,” said Chris Fialko, Hardy’s attorney. Hardy will likely be suspended for at least the first couple games of the season.
- It sounds like Bills GM Doug Whaley isn’t quite as supportive of quarterback E.J. Manuel as he was last season. “The way we looked at is, we don’t have a proven franchise quarterback. That’s obvious,” Whaley said, according to ESPN.com’s Mike Rodak. “But what we wanted to do is be perfect everywhere else, where that guy doesn’t have to put the game on his shoulders and be the man. We want him to be able to just make right decisions and be able to put the ball in the hands of the playmakers.”
- A reader asked Dan Graziano of ESPN.com (on Twitter) if the Giants might trade down in the first round to obtain more defensive value and he replied that it would be out of character for Big Blue to move down in the draft.