Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is hopeful seven-time Pro Bowl tight end Jason Witten will recover enough from a lacerated spleen suffered Aug. 13 to play against the New York Giants in the NFL season-opener on Wednesday.

Jones was encouraged by the results of a CAT scan this week.

"It's certainly not impossible to think he could be in the game," Jones told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. "So we'll see how it works this week. We'll have to handcuff him to keep him off the field. We will literally have to tie him to a post to keep Jason off the field.

"There's never been a player lobbying and working as hard as he will be lobbying to get on the field.''

Witten suffered the spleen injury in the Cowboys preseason opener against Oakland.

"It has to basically show signs that it's mended,'' Jones said. "And there's some traditional rules of thumb they (medical staff) have. But the nature of his injury was a Grade 1 out of 5 spleen injury. He recently had a CAT scan look and it was on the mend. And we'll take a look at it next week.''