IRVING, Texas -- Bill Parcells was watching the Dallas Cowboys last week. He will be watching the Dallas Cowboys this week too.

“You can’t see me rooting for the Packers, do you?” Parcells said the other day.

Well, he is great friends with former Packers general manager Ron Wolf, but his ties to the Cowboys are strong. He has a good friendship with owner and general manager Jerry Jones. Three players remain from his tenure as coach with the team: Tony Romo, Jason Witten and L.P. Ladouceur.

Tony Romo made Bill Parcells' Cowboys as an undrafted rookie in 2003 and worked his way up to the starting job, taking over for Drew Bledsoe in 2006. AP Photo/Mike McCarn

Parcells' bond with Witten might be stronger, but his ties to Romo will forever be remembered.

He gave Romo the chance to be the Cowboys' starting quarterback in 2006. He witnessed "Romo-mentum" as it was called and repeatedly reminded people of all they were not seeing even as Romo burst on the scene and took the Cowboys to the playoffs.

Parcells' final game as a coach came in a moment that still hounds Romo: the 2006 wild-card meeting in which Romo dropped a snap for a surefire go-ahead field goal against the Seattle Seahawks on Jan. 6, 2007.

As Parcells sat with the pilots on the flight home that night, he knew he had coached his last game.

But in a way, he is still coaching Romo.

When Romo took back-to-back sacks in the red zone against the Lions on Sunday, Parcells was like a lot of Cowboys fans, yelling at his television.

“He might've heard me,” Parcells laughed.

Romo joked, “I couldn't hear him, no.”

But it didn't surprise him that Parcells was coaching him from afar.

"I obviously learned a lot from Bill and he meant a lot to my career and he's the guy who pulled the trigger and allowed me to play even though it was a couple years too late. Make sure you write tongue and cheek on that. But he holds a special place in my heart and I'll always be thankful.”

When Parcells left the Cowboys, he gave Romo a list of quarterback commandments to follow. He wasn’t sure how Romo would develop over the years. He wasn’t sure Romo would have the type of season he had in 2014.

“I thought he was a prospect, obviously,” Parcells said. “I mean I put him in the game as a starting quarterback so I must’ve thought he had a chance to be pretty good. That’s what I thought.”

When Romo arrived as an undrafted rookie in 2003, Parcells was intrigued. He saw ability, but he saw a lot of indiscriminate throws, too. He didn’t want to coach the improvisation out of Romo, he just wanted the quarterback to control it some.

He did it with Phil Simms with the New York Giants, Drew Bledsoe with the New England Patriots and even Vinny Testaverde with the New York Jets.

“You try to tell him that throwing the ball away is a good play and sacks and interceptions and sack fumbles are bad plays,” Parcells said. “You have to preach it to them because those things cost you games.”

Standing at the podium after the comeback win against the Lions, Romo talked about purposely not trying to thread throws through tight windows and living for another down. If Parcells had been listening, he would have smiled.

Romo had his best season not because the Cowboys went 12-4 and won the NFC East. It wasn’t his best season because he completed 69.9 percent of his passes or had a 113.2 passer rating. He didn’t have his best season because he had 34 touchdown passes and just nine interceptions.

He had his best season because of DeMarco Murray, Dez Bryant and Witten, plus the offensive line.

It was a formula Parcells had that led to Super Bowls with the Giants, a Super Bowl appearance with the Patriots and an AFC Championship Game showing with the Jets.

“One of the great things the coaches did for him and the team was the distribution of the weight on offense,” Parcells said. “There’s a few more guys carrying the weight, not just him. That’s a great thing for him.”

Parcells occasionally sends text messages to Romo. When Romo signed his $108 million extension last year, Parcells jokingly asked him if he did the right thing in turning down more signing bonus money from the Denver Broncos as an undrafted free agent all those years ago and joined the Cowboys. His most recent text was sent Monday, but he didn’t want to say what it was about.

But he is clearly proud of Romo.

"I would say when he is gone from Dallas they’ll probably be saying, 'Well, this quarterback is pretty good but he’s not Tony Romo,'" Parcells said. "It's just like he's had to fight that battle that he's not Troy Aikman or Roger Staubach. It's a natural thing but he's done a good job. People should know by now all the things that he can do."