The Cowboys are in a spot of bother after Tyron Smith took off for the Giants and the left side of the offensive line is looking shaky.
Head coach Mike McCarthy could always move guard Tyler Smith into the Blind Side but is waiting to see how it all pans out, with the draft and trades still to come.
“Tyler Smith will take another step. We’ll keep him at guard right now, see how it unfolds, but I thought we took a big step,” McCarthy said at the NFL’s Annual League Meeting.
“If you look at the makeup of our offensive line last year where our younger players (were) backups and got to play too. I mean, you can put Brock (Hoffman) in the same category; he’s been here, and no one was as close to Tyler Biadasz as he was. So, I think that’s a natural step for him to step in there and we’ll continue to grow. But we definitely do want to continue to add talent and depth to that room.”
Smith played at left offensive tackle in his rookie year and should be able to do a passable job.
But as McCarthy says, they will wait for developments off the field to unfold in the next month.
“As of today. Let’s fill up the room, and then we’ll look at it,” McCarthy said on Tuesday. “I mean, the goal’s always get the best five on the field, but we’ve had this conversation every year since I’ve been here. So when does that occur, you know? Just look at our training camp last year. You know, we didn’t have the five starters practice together until the week of the first game, so it would be nice to have all five of your guys that you feel are going to be starters practice throughout April, May, June and into training camp.”
The savvy head coach believes in Smith’s capabilities to fit in.
“The cohesiveness of your offensive line, you look at that statistically or the history of football, equates to winning. So we’ve had veteran players that aren’t going to work a lot in training camp and so we’ve gone through that, but like I said, we took a big step last year with the youth of that group and it’ll be a little younger even again this year. Hopefully, with this group of offensive linemen coming in through the draft, I mean, it’d be great to add to that room. It’s an excellent room. It’s a room that will definitely improve just based on who’s in there today, but yeah, we’d like to continue to add to that,” he concluded.
