The Cowboys coach and owner held separate interviews, but both talked about backup plans if LT Tyron Smith cannot play Sunday vs. Atlanta.
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At 7:30 Friday morning, Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said he was “not alarmed” by left tackle Tyron Smith missing practice the day prior due to a neck issue. By 11 a.m., though, he had disclosed to the media that Smith had not participated in the morning’s walk-through, and team owner Jerry Jones had called the seven-time Pro Bowler “a game-time decision.”
The next 48 hours in Dallas will be pins-and-needles time as the Falcons bring Grady Jarrett, Takk McKinley, and Dante Fowler to town, looking to exploit a Cowboys offensive line that’s already minus La’el Collins. That unit would be a shell of its usual self if Smith is also unable to go.
“We’ll see at gametime what we’ve got,” Jones said during a phone chat with 105.3 The Fan, when asked about Smith’s status.”The good news is that the people who would replace him- the combinations of people- have had more time to work on it than we had this time last week. This year, we’re allowed to dress- activate- one more player; it has to be an offensive lineman, by the way. So what we’re talking about is a common thing and a common concern.”
The concern level may be more than common; given the player in question and the particular opponent coming in. Smith also sat out the Cowboys’ 2017 meeting with Atlanta; his replacement Chaz Green infamously allowed six sacks to Falcons defensive end Adrian Clayborn in a humiliating defeat.
Literally moments after Jones’s comments, while speaking with reporters on a conference call from The Star, McCarthy confirmed that Smith’s neck injury occurred during the individual portion of drills on Thursday. Fridays are now a “regeneration day” for the team under McCarthy, so player action for the day was limited to what the coach terms “a mock game.”
Smith did not participate in that glorified walk-through.
Wideout Amari Cooper and defensive end Aldon Smith were also listed as questionable on the injury report. Jones said the team would consider them to be gameday decisions as well, sticking with the textbook definition of the “questionable” designation.
McCarthy, however, reported that both of those players went through the mock game and expects both to be ready for Sunday.
Of Smith, though, he sounded less confident than he had just four hours earlier.
“I don’t have all the information,” McCarthy admitted. “But I know how he wants to go. He’s a pro, and he’s doing everything possible with the training staff. So we’ll see. We have time. We have another 48 hours. We’ve just got to make sure we do what’s best for him personally, and we’ll go from there.
“Frankly, we’re just going through the process, gathering information. As far as the plan, you’re always working different scenarios. We’ll continue to do that today and tomorrow. Really, we’ll see how Tyron is tomorrow; that will probably be the determining factor.”
It’s unclear what the contingency plan would be if Smith cannot play, but McCarthy explained that he would prefer to sub in one player for Smith and keep the rest of the line intact rather than move around multiple players along the line.
“I think you always would prefer to go one-for-one if you can because of continuity between each position, It’s so important, the reps. But you also have to factor in the possibilities of other combinations. And the third component of that is we’re in the matchup challenges of gameday. That is really done during the Monday/Tuesday game plan. So any time you put together the personnel groupings on offense, you also have the combinations of how you’re going to rotate both the offensive and defensive lines.”
While Zack Martin and Connor Williams have taken snaps at the tackle spot simply as a matter of course, McCarthy declined to dive deeper into who might have to play where to cover for a Smith absence.
He did get a follow-up question about Alex Light, the offensive lineman signed on Wednesday. Light spent time in Green Bay in 2018 and 2019, as well as this year’s August camp, so he has familiarity with both McCarthy and new Cowboys offensive line coach Joe Philbin.
What he doesn’t have much of, though, is experience, having appeared in just 16 games. Terence Steele, Brandon Knight, Tyler Biadasz, Connor McGovern… none of the options up front have a ton of snaps on their resume. But some or all may suddenly find themselves pressed into service on an offensive line that is suddenly a patchwork of Plan Bs.
“We will have an extra offensive lineman that we dress out, not necessarily just because of Tyron, that do[es] give us some more depth there on the gameday situation,” Jones said. “But we’ll be working with different combinations, and, obviously for competitive reasons, we’ll keep that kind of under our hat.”
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