Dallas Cowboys Mock Draft: Dallas trades back, collects Earl Thomas
By Reid Hanson
Jack Cichy, LB, Wisconsin
I simply couldn’t resist. While I think Jason Garrett and staff are in win-now mode, projecting Jack Cichy to the Dallas Cowboys is too good to pass up. If he passes the medicals (a requirement for the Cowboys to consider him), he wouldn’t be a red-shirt player, but rather a great player for right now.
Cichy is regarded as one of the 5-best talents at linebacker this year. The only problem is his injury history. He missed every single game in 2017 and the last seven games of 2016. In all he missed the last 20 games of his college career. Until he proves otherwise, he’s not a player that can be relied on.
The State of the LB Unit
The Dallas Cowboys are still optimistic about Jaylon Smith and his development at MIKE, but they want to reduce his snaps and not lean on him too much. He’s still facing an up-hill battle in his recovery. And Dallas obviously loves Sean Lee, but they can’t expect him to stay healthy over the course of a 16-game season (not an indictment on Lee’s injury proneness but rather the reality of the high-impact nature of being an NFL linebacker).
That’s why adding a blue-chip, but injury prone, player like Cichy makes sense.
Cichy plays with the same aggressiveness and intelligence as Lee and could be used to spell snaps throughout the season. –And hopefully with less of a falloff than we saw in Lee’s replacements last season. None of the three would need to play every single snap of a given game.
The Cowboys can keep the wear and tear off of Lee, and possibly groom Cichy as Lee’s replacement at WILL. Cichy is a gamble, but he’s a high-reward gamble late in the fourth so he’s nowhere near the risk Dallas took when they picked Lee and Smith in the second.
Most importantly, he’s expected to be heathy enough to play this season.