The Dallas Cowboys maintained a clean bill of health the entire summer. So naturally, All-Pro guard Tyler Smith is set to undergo thumb surgery on Tuesday and miss the next 4-6 weeks.
It's the bummer of all bummers with Dallas set to kick off the season against the New York Giants on Sunday night. Even though T.J. Bass is a starting-caliber guard and a seamless replacement -- and the Cowboys' offense should remain elite without Smith -- the timing could not be worse.
Speaking of timing, Brian Schottenheimer said Smith's thumb bothered him for most of training camp (h/t Ed Werder, WFAA). He tried to play through it, but the team ultimately decided surgery was necessary for a permanent solution.
Maybe there is more here than meets the eye, and hindsight is always 20/20, but why on earth didn't Smith undergo surgery sooner? It's a ligament injury. Not some run-of-the-mill ailment.
Tyler Smith's injury timeline makes Cowboys' handling seem very questionable
If the Cowboys knew that surgery was a possibility, wouldn't it have made sense to just get it over with? "Most of training camp" is vague, but Dallas reported to Oxnard on July 28. The injury could have happened three or four weeks ago.
Even if Smith's recovery bled into the regular season, odds are he'd miss one or two games, which happen to be two of the easier games on the schedule against the Giants and Commanders, respectively.
Given that Dallas plays on Thursday night in Week 5, our best guess is that Smith returns the following week against the Packers. That would give him nearly six weeks to recover while taking advantage of the mini-bye after Tampa Bay.
If so, Smith would miss tilts against the Ravens, Texans, and Buccaneers, respectively, in addition to New York and Washington. That's not exactly a murderer's row of opponents, but it's no cakewalk, either, and each matchup becomes more daunting without arguably the best guard in football.
Why didn't Tyler Smith just undergo surgery in the first place?
Had this happened a few days ago, testing Smith's ability to play through it would make total sense. But the fact that it's bothered him for most of the summer explains why his practice reps have been limited all along. That is infuriating to look back on.
The last thing we want is to pretend we know better than a professional organization and its medical staff. But unless there are details about Smith's injury that haven't been made public, it's difficult to understand why surgery wasn't the first course of action.
Think about it.
Smith has a ligament injury in his thumb. He's an offensive lineman. Grip strength isn't some ancillary part of his job. It's essential to winning blocks and thwarting defenders. If the injury was significant enough that surgery was always a possibility, why spend weeks seeing if one of the most important players on the roster could gut it out?
Had Dallas reached this conclusion earlier in camp, there's at least a chance Smith would be much further along in his recovery instead of undergoing surgery six days before the season opener.
Instead, the Cowboys spent most of the summer hoping Smith could manage an injury that directly compromises one of the most important functions of his position.
Now, the regular season is here, the experiment didn't work, and Dallas will be without one of its most important players because the permanent solution came at the latest possible moment.
The Cowboys have the horses to get by without Smith. But we feel much worse about the situation now that we know the timeline -- and severity -- of the injury.
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