Health Concerns Linger for Cowboys O-Line
When it rains injuries, it pours for the Cowboys.
First it was Trevon Diggs’ left knee, and now it is the lower half on a trio of Cowboys starting offensive linemen.
They aren’t season enders like Diggs, but they are bad enough to make them miss games.
The Cowboys came into the season with one of the best starting O-lines in the league – two future Hall of Famers in left tackle Tyron Smith and right guard Zack Martin, center Tyler Biadasz, left guard Tyler Smith and right tackle Terrence Steele.
But they are also the thinnest, with a backup group that features fifth-round draft pick Asim Richards, undrafted free agent T.J. Bass and 7-year veteran and Falcons castoff Chuma Edoga. That is after their top two guys – Matt Waletzko and Josh Ball, went on the injured list before the season started.
The jury is out on whether those two would help more than the other three if they were healthy. But they’re not, so no reason to worry about them.
They were in such a bad way last week, they had to tap into the practice squad and elevate centers Brock Hoffman and Sean Harlow to the game-day roster. This week they signed another center to the practice squad – former 2018 first round pick Billy Smith.
“You know, Tyler (Biadasz) is our field general,” Tyler Smith said. “He understands defenses. He understands our offense and he is a huge part of what we do. It is a big gaping hole when he’s gone.”
It caught up with them on Sunday in Arizona, when they had to start Edoga, Bass and Hoffman to replace Tyron Smith (hamstring), Martin (ankle) and Biadasz (hamstring).
Something they didn’t prepare for enough during the week.
“We need to be better,” McCarthy said. “We had young players that I am very proud of. Two gentlemen that had their first career starts, but their preparation wasn’t to the level, in hindsight, that it frankly should have been. You learn from that. Play with a higher end of caution with these injuries and timelines and those types of things. But we missed the mark there last week, clearly.”
The offense struggled early to get anything going. They rolled into halftime with just 153 yards of offense and a 21-10 deficit.
They tacked on 263 yards of total offense in the second half but went 0-for-4 in red zone. They also committed four penalties, two for false starts and two for holding.
It was a tough day that will be hard to bounce back from without Smith, Martin and Biadasz in the lineup.
“We just have to compete. As a player, they call it, we haul it,” Tyler Smith said. “We didn’t execute … I feel like I could have executed better in the red zone. There was a play where I thought that if I would have done better, we would have gotten a better result. So, we just got to go to practice, emphasize the fundamentals and just do what we gotta do -- understand our strengths and weaknesses, and we’ll come back and be better.”
But if they have to go without the three again this week, which is a possibility after all three missed practice on Wednesday, the Cowboys coaches know they need to be better prepared all the way down the depth chart.
“I’m in charge of training the team and making sure everybody gets the reps, gets the information, the film, all the things that lead up to preparing for the game,” McCarthy said. “We had three guys starting that didn’t take a lot of reps last week. So, I am ultimately responsible for that, but we need to be better. And everybody involved in that needs to be better, because (we) can’t operate like that.”