Jerry Jones admits he doesn't know how the Tony Romo situation will resolve itself

Jerry is confident the Cowboys will work through the offseason to figure it out

A little more than two weeks ago, Jerry Jones publicly told himself (and other Cowboys employees) to "cool it" when it comes to talking about the possibility of moving on from Tony Romo. In a development that comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody, Jones has violated that edict, speaking several times about what the future may hold for Romo.

This week, he did it again.

"It's no secret that I just think so much of him as a person and think so much of him as a player," Jones said in a radio appearance on 105.3 The Fan, per the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "The team we have, especially the offensive side of the ball, was built for Tony. So this is what it is. It's a juncture that we have to address.

"I don't know how ultimately we will resolve this. Nobody should be alarmed because you don't have all the answers. There are some issues here that you just got to see how the cards are played. But we'll work through this. We have a sound enough foundation together that on an individual basis we'll get through this."

It's assumed that Romo will be wearing something other than a star on the side of his helmet in 2017, with our Jason La Canfora listing the Texans, Broncos, Cardinals (if Carson Palmer retires), and Chiefs as the most likely destinations.

The Cowboys appear to be internally confident that they can land a draft pick or more in exchange for his services, but if the market proves cooler than expected, they'll have to decide whether to keep him on as Dak Prescott's very expensive backup at a $24.7 million cap hit, release him outright and take on $19.6 million in dead money, or make him a post-June 1 release and split the dead money over two seasons.

Jerry is right about one thing, though: the Cowboys do have plenty of time to sort this out. The free agency period during which Romo can be traded doesn't start until early March. Plenty of teams will be looking for new quarterbacks during that time, and others will likely do so during the draft in late April. And even after that, there's a bunch of time until training camps begin, and then several more weeks until the season starts.

This situation might take a significant portion of that time to resolve itself, but so long as the Cowboys find a way to get value out of it, they should come out OK.