3 reasons why the Cowboys should keep Tyron Smith
By Angel Torres
2. Looking at his injury history
The biggest reason fans want Smith to be replaced has to be centered around his health. In 11 seasons, Tyron has started all 144 games he has been active for and he only missed one game in his first five seasons.
Through the next four seasons, Tyron started in 13 games each season. That means he had missed 3 games for the last four seasons prior to the 2020 season. We saw the OT miss almost the entire 2020 season due to a surgical procedure that would reduce his neck/shoulder stingers.
But he said he felt better than before heading into training camp.
Cowboys LT Tyron Smith (neck): “It is one of those injuries where it was a stinger here and there, and I started losing feeling in my left arm.” Been an issue pretty much since he began playing football, he said. “It’s stronger than what it was before.”
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) June 8, 2021
Smith missed an additional six games this season but none were reportedly due to what concerned me the most. I hope you are not forgetting that the NFL added an additional game this season.
He did have a precautionary MRI before the road game against New England but some in the know considered it just a “precautionary move”. So out of 177 available regular-season games, Tyron has missed 33 games in 11 seasons.
Curiosity got the best of me so I compared Tyron to who the numbers and the eye test say is the best left tackle in the game.
San Francisco’s Trent Williams came into the league a year before Tyron was drafted 11th overall by Dallas. You would be hard-pressed to find talk about replacing Williams in the bay area and even with the one-year head start, Williams has played in 149 games starting 148 of them. That means Williams has only started four more games than Smith even though Williams was drafted a year before Williams.
I am not going to get into why Williams has missed so many games, but the majority of games that Smith missed were due to a stinger problem before this season.
Tyron missed games this season due to Covid and ankle injuries. Seeing as an ankle injury can happen to anyone at any given time in this sport, I am not overly concerned with Tyron’s overall health moving forward. If the stinger issue does return, then the replacement talks would be warranted. Until then, I am still Team Smith.
Should the Dallas Cowboys be thinking about eventually starting the grooming process behind Smith? Absolutely. Replacing him now though would place the spotlight on the tackle situation in Dallas, and not in a good way.