Tyron Smith’s availability for Sunday all comes down to what he’s able to do on Saturday.
The Cowboys left tackle is in extreme danger of missing his second straight game with bone spurs in his ankle. While he has not taken part in practice this week, Dallas head coach Mike McCarthy isn’t ready to rule out the seven-time Pro Bowler quite yet. On Friday, he told reporters that he wants to give Smith one more day.
“If Tyron doesn’t practice [Saturday], he won’t be available,” McCarthy said. “That’s kind of the timeline that we’re on.”
Backup Terence Steele assumed Smith’s role in practice this week for the Cowboys, taking all the first-team snaps at left tackle ahead of Sunday’s home game versus Atlanta.
For Steele, it would mark his second straight outing there, after six consecutive starts on the opposite side. He took over at right tackle for the entirety of La’el Collins’s five-game suspension, and played well enough that the team left him there in Week 8, Collins’s first game back on the active roster. Smith left that game early and hasn’t played since. Cowboys coaches then moved Steele to the left side to cover for Smith and had Collins resume his usual spot at right.
The undrafted Texas Tech product struggled last week against Denver on the left side, but says he is more comfortable at the position after another week of practice.
“It’s like trying to write with your left hand. The biomechanics of being on the left is a lot different,” Steele told media members this week. “Hands, feet, eyes. Like, it’s everything.”
The second-year man said it required a completely different mindset to switch sides. And if he’s called on to go versus the Falcons, he says he’ll be ready.
“I just took a different approach this week of my angles and my sets. I think last week, I was trying to make it too much like my right. It’s just different.”
And it turns out the 24-year-old has a pretty good mentor trying to teach him the finer points of the role.
“He’s always in the background watching me,” Steele says of Smith. “Every walkthrough, I know he’s there keeping me– whatever he sees, he’ll correct me.”
McCarthy explained that the club hopes Smith’s ankle issue can be rehabbed back to playing strength but admitted that, when it comes to a possible surgery, “I think you look at all the options.”
For now, though, Smith’s short-term options are simple: practice Saturday, or keep watching Steele in his place on Sunday.
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