Sean Lee’s entire professional football past has been with the Dallas Cowboys. It’s been widely suggested that whatever comes after his days on the field are over will keep him on the team’s sideline. Lee’s past as a player and his assumed future as a coach may be about to intersect.
The 34-year-old linebacker is nearing the end of a one-year deal he signed back in March. He wasn’t a lock to return, but chose to stay with the team that drafted him in 2010’s second round, in large part to help mentor the rising duo of Jaylon Smith and Leighton Vander Esch.
He spent a chunk of 2020 injured, as he has during most of his 11 seasons with the Cowboys. His mentoring came from the sidelines and in team meeting rooms as he dealt with a sports hernia. Since recovering from surgery in which his abdominal muscles had to be reattached to his pelvis, Lee has helped out on the field, too. He’s been in on just 10 tackles in seven games, but he’s provided a veteran presence on a defense that’s needed it often this season.
Widely considered one of the smartest players to suit up in recent memory, the man they call ‘The General’ has been seen by most as a prime coaching candidate whenever he decides he’s done playing. Many have even likened him to a coordinator who just happens to be on the field for his uncanny ability to read Xs and Os.
His current head coach seems willing to help him complete the transition from cleats to clipboard.
Mike McCarthy effectively hinted that there might well be a place for the two-time Pro Bowler on his defensive staff in Dallas. He and Lee are both Pittsburgh natives; the former says he believes the latter would be a “great” coach when the time comes.
And that time may be coming soon.
Mickey Spagnola from the team website dropped this nugget in this week’s column:
“Maybe this was just meant to be. But with veteran linebacker Sean Lee on an expiring one-year contract and turning 35 before the start of next season, this could very well be his final Cowboys home game on Sunday. And he could very well be starting with Leighton Vander Esch more than likely missing the game with a high ankle sprain. And if Lee does, certainly head coach Mike McCarthy fittingly would name him a captain and send him out for the coin toss.”
There is a certain poetic perfection to the story ending that way.
But Lee is too locked in on his present role as a player to think yet about his potential future as a coach.
“I really don’t think about it,” Lee told reporters this week, “just because the game is so tough, and I’ve always tried to prepare a certain way to where your focus is purely on your opponent, on how to make plays on the field, and almost trying to be obsessed with that: going over it, rehearsing it constantly throughout the week so that when you get into the game, you feel so comfortable. So for me, I’m just trying to go through the process of preparing to win another game, obviously against a great opponent, a rival. Every game I’ve played in, I feel blessed to have the opportunity. Being injured, being out before, especially during this tough season, having an opportunity to play is all I focus on because of how lucky I am.”
Lucky, Sean Lee says.
From the outside looking in, it seems the only luck Lee’s had was bad luck. He’s missed 42 games in his career and made it through a full season just once. But right now, he says he is ready for whatever workload the team requires.
“This is as good as I’ve felt,” according to the All-Pro. “I feel good. I’ve gotten better every single week since I’ve gotten back, physically. Each week, I’ve been able to have more reps in practice, been able to play a little bit more in different games, and I feel really good.”
It’s times just like this, when he is feeling good and healthy and strong, that keeps him returning, repeatedly pushing back at thoughts of retirement. He came close after the 2019 season, he says.
“You kind of go back and forth on things at times as you get older. But the problem is, any time I go on the field and I get to play, and you make a couple plays, you’re like, ‘Well, I like this too much.’ That is my problem; I love this game too much. I love this organization a lot, and I love playing… I’m addicted to playing the game.”
But the more Lee talks about his other role with the Cowboys, the one where he’s a mentor, a veteran leader, an on-the-field coordinator, a quasi-coach, the guy teaching how to tackle instead of making the tackle- The General– the more he visibly lets himself get just as juiced up about the possibility of leading this team to success in a way that doesn’t require ice baths afterward.
It is, after all, why he’s been such a hands-on guy even when dealing with his own injuries.
He’s always been this way. While at Penn State, an ACL injury forced Lee to take a medical redshirt for the 2008 season. His teammates elected him a team captain anyway, and he spent his rehab acting as an undergrad assistant coach for every practice and wearing a headset on the sideline for every game that year.
“Part of why I’ve tried to help is because I’ve been out so much,” Lee admitted. “And you don’t feel like you’re part of the team when you’re not helping. So if I can help in any way, if I can help a young guy make a play in a game or help him see things that can help him play a little faster, that was always my way of still being involved with the team. In some ways, I like that as much as making a play myself, especially when you see a young guy like Leighton and some of our young linebackers who want to play well, who work so hard. You want to do that any way that you can.”
It seems perhaps inevitable that Sean Lee will one day be a defensive coach for the Dallas Cowboys.
It feels like that day may be coming soon.
But The General will have two more days- at least- on the field first.
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