Cowboys' Tony Romo practices

LONDON -- Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo is practicing for the first time Thursday since suffering two transverse process fractures in his back on Oct. 27 against the Washington Redskins.

While coach Jason Garrett would not commit to Romo playing Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars at London's Wembley Stadium, Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones said Romo will play.

"I'm anticipating him playing, have no reason to think that he won't, and this will be a nice little practice session for him out there today," Jones said. "But my expectations are for him to play."

When asked whether he would play Sunday, Romo said: "We'll see. I think we'll take it day by day and see what happens as we move closer. It's improving each day. We did some things today that were a positive. If it keeps going in that direction, we'll have a good chance."

During the portion of Wednesday's practice open to the media, Romo threw passes in pat and go and individual drills, as well as on-air team drills. He's also gone through the walk-through sessions at the team's hotel the last three days.

Romo was listed as limited in practice.

"He'll hopefully be able to do what we want him to do on a Thursday practice," Garrett said before practice, "and as the week goes on he'll feel good with the work he's gotten and he'll be able to play in the game. But we'll just take it day-by-day."

Garrett has stressed that the final decision as to whether Romo will play will be made by the medical staff with input from Romo. The Cowboys want to see how Romo functions in practice, but there is certainly optimism that Romo will play Sunday.

Romo is on the same practice schedule he has followed since Week 2 by sitting out Wednesday. He remained at the team hotel to receive treatment on Wednesday as his teammates practiced.

"Any time he can play, we want him to play," Jones said. "We're a better team, to be trite, with him playing. And so as far as the meaningful games, I'm talking about -- we didn't play him in the preseason obviously but felt we could have had we needed him to win the game -- but these games, we don't play many of them. You know that. And every one of them counts so much.

"Invariably any time you do lose one of these games in the regular season, our experience with us, especially these last several years, is we needed every win we could get. There's no such thing as holding him out and forgoing the potential chance that we win."