FILM STUDY: Internal Offensive Line Options
Tyron Smith is gone and not coming back. Do they have an answer already on the roster?
Hopefully, you can forgive my feels.
I am a huge Tyron Smith fan and have made that abundantly clear. When I started studying draft prospects with my own two eyes rather than reading someone else’s thoughts, Tyron was one of my first pet cats.
I remember his Pro Day at USC like it was yesterday: this hulking human who was barely 20 years old was doing drills shirtless. Because, of course, anyone who had any resemblance to Tyron Smith would never require a shirt.
But, this isn’t a modeling contest, he had to be able to play at a high level. And boy, did he. For my money, he is amongst the very best offensive linemen of this generation and will surely be in Canton when the time is right.
Back on Valentine’s Day, fittingly enough, I penned my offseason priority list for the Cowboys 16 unrestricted free agents. I felt that there were only two top objectives for the Cowboys to be able to advance their position as a NFC contender — Tyron Smith and Stephon Gilmore.
Here was the passage on Tyron:
You know me. I am inviting Tyron Smith back every year until he tells me no or until I see a person make him look bad in NFL combat. Tyron has a body that is not close to what it once was and he has a performance level that is still better than most everyone in the industry. I can’t break the bank and something tells me a Kansas City would love to pay him $10 million for one season to come play left tackle for them. But, I am trying to keep my guy because I think he is my best option at left tackle and because he is a Cowboys legend. This is my guy and my top priority.
Of course, the Cowboys did neither. Gilmore is still out there, but Tyron signed a contract that I can only describe as shockingly disappointing that Dallas did not secure his return.
It was a one-year, $6.5 million deal with the Jets that can easily become $12.25 million if he matches last year’s playing percentage of 72% of all offensive plays.
If he misses time – like many Cowboys fans love to project – then he gets considerably less. If he has perfect attendance, he can get up to $18.5 million, but much of that can be pushed into 2025 with “unlikely to be attained” incentives.
In other words, this seemed like a no-brainer for the Cowboys, but that assumes two things:
Tyron would have taken this deal from Dallas. It is highly possible, although I am wild guessing this one, that he wasn’t willing to take a “sing for your supper” deal from Dallas coming off an excellent 2023 given their relationship. It is easier to “prove it” to total strangers in a fresh city.
Dallas did not already decide that now was the time to turn the page no matter what the price was.
That second one definitely seems the truth to me. Football is built on the expiration dates of the veterans who are the most expensive pieces and least likely to be at practice. If you are looking for that last boost to get your team a step further, you could talk yourself into the idea that we need everyone at practice to be ready to play on Sunday at kickoff.
Perhaps that message was preached coming off a no-show first half in the Green Bay game a few months back.
The flip side is taking a massive step back in quality is not the road to better results. But if Mike McCarthy built a reputation in Green Bay of winning football, you should know that much of it was knowing that he could develop offensive linemen who were not high picks into excellent players.
He did it again and again. In 2014 and 2016, his Packers beat the Cowboys in both years in the playoffs with an offensive line that had Day 3 draft picks at left tackle, left guard, center, and right guard. Only Bryan Bulaga was a first-round draft pick during that run and he played the role of Tyron Smith in that he was always hurt, despite his quality.
But, David Bakhtiari, Josh Sitton, Corey Linsley, and TJ Lang? Well, that would be picks No. 109, 135, 161, and 109 in their respective drafts. They were not fill-ins. They were his starters. They were his plan.
So, let’s talk about the plan.