Why Cowboys Fans Shouldn't Panic Despite Tyler Smith's Injury

Losing an All-Pro player is never a good thing, and the Dallas Cowboys are going through that now. Tyler Smith was absent from the media portion of practice on Monday, and head coach Brian Schottenheimer said afterward that he needed to have thumb surgery.

Smith will be out 4-6 weeks, meaning he will begin the season on the IR. The timing isn't ideal with the first game of the year less than one week away, but the good news is that Smith will be back around midseason.

Another positive for fans to cling to is the fact that his backup is more than capable of filling in for the short-term. Former undrafted free agent T.J. Bass has spent the past three seasons with the Cowboys and has proven himself capable of starting at guard.

Bass enters his fourth season in the league and has played in 48 games with 10 starts. He entered the offseason as a restricted free agent, but the Cowboys kept him around via a second-round tender. They needed to put that high of a tender on Bass, because he was coming off an excellent campaign and surely would have drawn interest on the open market.

In 2026, Bass started five games for Dallas and had to fill in when Tyler Booker was injured at right guard. According to Brandon Loree, Bass was the 31st-highest rated guard in the league and had a 99.0 pass-block efficiency while allowing just four pressures and zero sacks.