The Dallas Cowboys news cycle is parallel to their season. They have their ups and downs.
On Sunday, they demolished the Los Angeles Rams at AT&T Stadium, getting fans’ hopes to rise some.
Following that on Tuesday, they watched the team (San Francisco 49ers) that put them through a grinder load up for a deep season run. Not to mention, their NFC East rival already added an All-Pro caliber player to their defensive backfield.
So, ups and downs are an excellent way of putting it.
Nevertheless, all Dallas has to rely on is their active roster, practice squad, and players that may return from IR.
While we all know the lip service, they continue to look for ways to improve their roster.
We also recognize that there won’t be many upgrades on the open market at some positions should a significant injury occur.
Three position groups that premise would apply to more than others.
Let’s take a look at each one.
Watching an offensive lineman go down on Sunday doesn’t help matters
Absolutely nothing new here for the Dallas Cowboys.
This offensive line has the potential to be really good and equally problematic, and it all hinges on their health.
On Sunday, fans watched Chuma Edoga get rolled up. Granted, he has not been the 6th man on this line that we would have hoped.
He has been good enough to protect Dak Prescott’s blindside.
With him out for an unspecified amount of time, Dallas hopes Tyron Smith can get back in the lineup. Vice President Stephen Jones described Tyron’s chances of returning as “hopeful”.
That’s not reassuring. If he doesn’t return, Asim Richards becomes the next man up.
Mike McCarthy and Mike Solari could decide to move Tyler Smith to the outside, but that would cause more shuffling, and for all intents and purposes, they were trying to minimize that movement.
Even if Tyron is back, we don’t know for how long, and that’s an even bigger problem in itself.
If he and Chuma miss time simultaneously, I’m not confident the rookie Richards could do more than cleanup duty this early in his career.
Memories of Chaz Green come to mind.
Either way, this position group is hanging together by the proverbial thread. One injury would change a lot.
Losing Tony Pollard for any amount of time could be problematic for Dallas
This position group bothers me more than the offensive line.
With the linemen, potential injury injuries apply to every team in the NFL. There’s only so many good players that can play in the trenches.
However, for the running back group, there were plenty of opportunities to improve so that one injury wouldn’t change the unit’s dynamic.
Tony Pollard is an outstanding player.
Last year, he was a great player, partly because he was the lightning to Ezekiel Elliott’s thunder.
That has not been the case this season. Rico Dowdle plays sparingly, and Hunter Luepke grabbed a few snaps here and there.
But I doubt there are any fans out there who would feel great if something happened to Pollard, and we had to rely on Dowdle, Luepke, and Malik Davis/Deuce Vaughn.
Yes, the team could go to the free-agent pool, but the best of the group is Leonard Fournette. He’s available for a reason.
Derrick Henry was an excellent option to pair with Pollard.
Now that the trade deadline has passed, it also wipes away the pipe dream.
Now, as a longtime fan, we have to hope Tony can stay healthy. If not, we should anticipate seeing a lot of mixing and matching.
Dallas’ secondary depth helped the linebacker out of a tough spot
If Dallas were to lose another linebacker, it would be fixable but not ideal.
When DeMarvion Overshown went down, Defensive Coordinator Dan Quinn moved some resources around, and it is currently making him look like a genius.
Markquese Bell has been a revelation, even if it has only been a short amount of time.
Playing with roster moves, the team lost Devin Harper. It didn’t seem like a huge deal at first.
Losing Leighton Vander Esch for a significant amount of time was the kick in the groin. He is still on the mend, which prompted the team to sign veteran linebacker Rashaan Evans.
It’s early, is all I can say at this point. Evans played some snaps against the Rams, but not enough to make anyone feel at ease.
He obviously needs more snaps to determine how effective he could be for this unit.
If we’re being honest, Dallas could use another linebacker on this roster, even with Evans. Playing with three or four safeties on the field is excellent until a team line up in bigger packages.
The one game I can’t run home and tell Mom about with Bell is the San Francisco game.
They were physical and had a tight end who wanted to play grimy and block. That team may be reeling now, but they will somehow get their acts together if we see them in a wildcard game.
A trade wasn’t in the cards at linebacker, but we shouldn’t wait until an injury forces our hand.
