Cowboys Owens Has Surgery on Broken Right Finger

No matter how well a team plays or how big its victory is, there always seems to be at least one negative coming out of a game. For the Cowboys, the downer in their 27-10 win over the Redskins Sunday night was another injury to wide receiver Terrell Owens, who broke the fourth metacarpal on his right hand early in the game. Owens, who underwent surgery Monday, said team doctors told him Sunday night prior to the surgery that he likely would miss two to four weeks. No details were made available about Owens` procedure. If there`s ever a time to suffer such an injury, now seems best for the Cowboys, who have a bye this week and aren`t scheduled to play another game until Oct. 1 at Tennessee. While the Cowboys might have to play the Titans without Owens, there is a good chance the veteran receiver will be ready for the Oct. 8 game at Philadelphia against his former team. "I don`t know that; it`s way too early," Parcells said Monday when asked if Owens could return for the Titans game. . . . "This is not going to be an injury that`s going to prohibit him from running and doing a lot of things that could really set him back conditioning-wise. So I think once he gets (the surgery), he`ll be pretty good to go physically, other than maybe the utilization of the hand for a while." Doctors were expected to surgically insert a metal plate and possibly pins around the fractured bone on the back of his hand leading into the ring finger to help facilitate the healing. "Most of those injuries, when they put a little plate in there, which I think they might do, that pretty much fixes it," Parcells said. "It`s a question of what you can do. Once they put that in there it`s not going anywhere. You`re not going to displace it again. It`s just a question of can you get it functional." Owens said he thought he suffered the injury during the Cowboys` first offensive possession against Washington. "I think it was fluke thing," Owens said. "I think I was going in blocking and I felt something weird. I felt like I jammed it. But I just kept playing." But Owens wasn`t playing up to his standards. He caught just three passes for 19 yards, yet he missed on several more opportunities, dropping a pair of passes and also allowing Washington safety Mike Rumph to knock what appeared would be a touchdown pass out of his hands in the end zone during the first quarter. Parcells said he was not aware of Owens` injury until midway through the fourth quarter, just before Owens headed to the locker room for X-rays. With Owens possibly out for at least one game, the Cowboys will expect more from Patrick Crayton, who scored his first touchdown of the season Sunday night, along with rookie Sam Hurd and first-year receiver Jamaica Rector, who was inactive Sunday after playing in the season opener at Jacksonville. But Parcells isn`t ruling out Owens until he receives the post-op details. Kicking It Around Parcells said he waited until "the 11th hour" prior to kickoff before deciding to keep both Mike Vanderjagt and Shaun Suisham on his 45-man game-day roster. "I was sitting in the coaches` dressing room with one name to inactivate," Parcells said. "And I had that name from the night before. It was still in question to me. When we went out there in warm-ups and it was raining the way it was, I thought this is going to be really a field position game and we`re going to need to make sure that we`re not giving it to them in a good spot." Parcells said he wasn`t necessarily committed to dressing Vanderjagt over Suisham, but the potential for inclement weather was the deciding factor to keep both. Tight end Ryan Hannam became the odd man out, and Vanderjagt and Suisham split place kick and kickoff duties. The heavy rain in the Irving area subsided by kickoff, but Parcells` decision paid off. Suisham, the lone active kicker against Jacksonville, landed four of his six kickoffs inside the 5-yard line, and none worse than the 8. Vanderjagt, who has been criticized for weeks because of a recurring sore groin and his inconsistency in preseason, made both of his field-goal attempts, including a key 50-yarder that gave Dallas a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter. "Listen, he didn`t earn anything from me," Parcells said of Vanderjagt, who missed two short overtime field goals in the preseason finale against the Vikings. "I`m just happy he made the kick for his own well being. That was really kind of a game-affecting kick, although it wasn`t the same kind as the ones against Minnesota." Vanderjagt signed a three-year, $5.4 million deal in March with the best career field-goal percentage in league history. But Parcells hadn`t seen enough consistency on place kicks or kickoffs leading up to the season opener. "You`re not going to make them all, but you`ve got to be able to rely on your kicker and you can`t play the game being afraid of your kicker," Parcells said. "So I was just glad that this was a kick that was a difference-maker and that he made it. That certainly helps him and helps everybody involved." Parcells hasn`t decided whether he`ll continue to dress two kickers, but said he would dress one if he felt the other team`s return game wasn`t a strong factor. Vanderjagt hasn`t kicked off regularly since 2003, but Suisham`s consistency allows Vanderjagt to concentrate field goals. Parcells has said he`d prefer not to carry two kickers because he probably must sacrifice a key special teams player or depth on offense. -Rob Phillips Feeling Better When Parcells said he was "feeling ill" in his post-game news conference Sunday night, he meant it, and as he said, "literally." Parcells wasn`t pleased with the Cowboys` nine penalties or their stack of dropped balls, but the paleness in his face after the game had more to do with dehydration. "When you put those rain jackets on at night and prior to the game - I know (defensive coordinator) Mike Zimmer had the same problem a little bit - you dehydrate yourself and that`s not good for me," said Parcells, who was feeling better Monday afternoon here at Valley Ranch. "When I have an electrolyte imbalance in my system that`s not good. That`s what happened, but I`ll try to be a little more cautious about that." Parcells showed his superstitious side by saying he didn`t take off the rain jacket "because we were winning." "That shows you just how warped I am," he said.