Dallas Cowboys’ top priority is to find Tyron Smith’s replacement | Opinion

Tyron Smith is one of the Dallas Cowboys’ greatest draft successes this century, and it’s time the team find his replacement.

If the Cowboys plan to start Smith at left tackle in Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season, Dak Prescott best prepare to watch his back on every snap, including running plays.

Of all the Dallas Cowboys players who struggled in their playoff loss against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, watching Smith routinely lose 1-on-1 matchups was painful.

For years Smith routinely made the NFL’s best pass rushers look small, and human. Now, Smith is the one who looks human.

Smith has always looked like some real-life Marvel character, but this is not an MCU movie studio. The Cowboys can’t apply CGI effects and make him The Incredible Left Tackle.

The Cowboys offensive line, as a unit, retained its status during the season as one of the best in the NFL based on past, not current, performance. This was a line that struggled all year, and was whipped by the 49ers.

The Cowboys will need a guard, and center, but when they evaluate their potential first round draft selection for the 2022 NFL Draft, left tackle needs to be at the top of the list.

Between defensive end Tank Lawrence, receiver Amari Cooper, linebacker Leighton Vander Esch, Smith and a few others, the Cowboys are stuffed with difficult personnel decisions for 2022.

Smith is the hardest.

They don’t want to make the same mistake they made with Flozell Adams near the end of his career, when they hung on one year too long before they knew they needed to find his replacement.

There is no way they can count on Smith making it through a full 17-game schedule, and then the playoffs, too.

Few players have quietly meant more to the Cowboys since he was the ninth overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, and the game has beat up Smith.

He’s coming off his 11th season, and he recently turned 31.

Believing Smith can suddenly find, and maintain, good health in his 12th season may be too optimistic even for the most optimistic person on earth, Dallas Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones.

Even though Smith plays a position where some players have remained healthy enough to play deep into their 30s, his body is not holding up so he can be a version of L.A. Rams tackle Andrew Whitworth, whose still playing at 40.

Some guys get lucky and their injuries aren’t to too bad. Smith isn’t that lucky.

There were several years where Smith’s back prevented him from the bend a tackle prefers, but he’s such a good athlete and smart player he didn’t become a major problem.

Now he doesn’t move laterally the same, and against the 49ers the lack of mobility was an issue.

The last time Smith played a full season was 2015.

He missed three games in each of the next four seasons with knee and ankle issues, too. In 2020, he appeared in only two games after he finally had to have season-ending surgery on his neck to address an injury had bothered him for an extended period.

In training camp in 2021, he sounded excited and said the same thing most players over the age of 30 say before the start of the season: That he’s in the best shape of his life, and he’s never felt better.

He sustained an ankle injury in Week 6, and he missed six games this season. When he did play after that injury, he wasn’t the same player the Cowboys have relied on for more than a decade.

There is no immediate solution on the roster, including the potential scenario of moving right tackle La’el Collins from right tackle to left tackle.

Collins is a solid right tackle, and it’s hard envisioning a scenario where he is better on the opposite side.

Terence Steele is not a long-term solution, either.

Smith has two years remaining on his contract, and his current salary cap hit in 2022 would be a healthy $17.5 million. If the Cowboys bring him back, it’s likely they will ask him to re-do his contract, i.e. take a paycut.

For four to five seasons, the Dallas Cowboys did have one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, due in part because they had one of the game’s best left tackles in Tyron Smith.

That is no longer the case, and the team has to find his replacement.