When one of the top three or four players on an NFL roster suddenly is being sent for surgery a mere six days before the opening week of the season, there are sure to be questions aplenty. And when it happens to a team as closely watched as the Dallas Cowboys–as it did this week with the Tyler Smith thumb surgery that was abruptly announced by coach Brian Schottenheimer on Monday–the number of questions gets multiplied.
The main question around Smith has been a simple one: What happened? And from that stems another, why didn’t the Cowboys choose to do something about the damaged ligament in his thumb sooner? In announcing the Smith injury, coach Brian Schottenheimer told reporters that Smith first reported trouble with the hand back in training camp in Oxnard. Should the Cowboys have put him on the shelf then, in hopes of getting him back in time for Week 1, or at least earlier than mid-October?
Cowboys Praise Tyler Smith ‘Toughness’
To recap, here’s what Schottenheimer said at Cowboys practice on Monday: “Over time. He’s such a tough guy. I can’t say enough about Tyler and just the toughness, but at the end of the day, we can’t pinpoint when it happened, but it’s just one of things that, at the end of the day, we made the decision, we all did, that, hey the best thing is to get in front of this thing, and it is a long season, so let’s get it fixed.
“At the end of the day, you always see if you can play through these things, he has done things like that. Like a lot of guys have. They’ve been able to play through them. Unfortunately, when you are an offensive lineman, grip strength is important and things like that are really important. We know he is a quick healer, and we want to get it fixed. He will be back for too long.”
‘Big Controversy’ for Cowboys
That was not exactly a satisfactory answer for some around The Star. And on social media, there was significant backlash on the Cowboys decision to let Smith “play through” the thumb problem.
As Cowboys insider Bobby Belt of 105.3 The Fan in Dallas said on the air, “The big controversy that came out of this was sort of what Brian Schottenheimer mentioned when he said he’d been dealing with this for a while. And there was a lot of pushback about the idea that they waited too long on this. …
“I don’t like leaning on that. ‘I think that guy heals quick.’ You might have that feeling but it is a little like, I don’t know that. … I don’t think there was a way to avoid this. From everything I heard, it sounds like something like—it didn’t sound like he was dealing with pain. He entered training camp without any pain in his thumb.”
Tyler Smith Timeline Still a Question
It did not help that there appeared to be some uncertainty, even within the Cowboys offices, about when the injury happened.
Former Cowboys scout Bryan Broaddus reported, “Tyler Smith. Team has had two padded practices since they returned from ARZ. Would be hard for them to discover there was an issue with the thumb without more work. It also appears the thumb was injured while the team was back at the Star and not earlier. Reason why fixing now.”
That belies the suggestion that this was an injury that occurred “over time.” The Dallas Morning News, on Tuesday, ran a headline that read: “Did Cowboys wait too long to send Tyler Smith for surgery?”
That article, by veteran Cowboys beat reporter Calvin Watkins, stated, “Smith was in uniform for the open training camp practices at The Star in Frisco but was limited. After that, it became clear the three-time Pro Bowler’s functionality at guard would be affected by the injury.”
In the end, that is all that matters. Maybe the Cowboys should have addressed Smith’s injury earlier. But they didn’t, so now, it’s one of the Cowboys best players, off for surgery here in early September.
Cowboys Face ‘Pushback’ on Controversial Decision Before Week 1