Jerry Jones Provides Worrying Injury Updates on Tyler Smith and Tyron Smith

NFL coaches typically like to play coy with injury news until they're forced to make official reports. Jerry Jones does not care what his coaches want to do, and he was on the radio giving updates on some key Dallas Cowboys injuries on Friday morning.

Jones reports that both Tyron Smith and Tyler smith are "suspect" to play, and the update sounds especially bad for Tyler Smith.

Tyler Smith and Tyron Smith Injury News

This is sounding an awful lot like both starters on the left side of the Cowboys' offensive line will be missing on Sunday night.

Tyron Smith was added to the injury report with an ankle issue on Thursday, and it's never a good sign when someone first appears on the report late in the week.

Tyler Smith has said he's "optimistic" about playing Sunday after suffering a hamstring injury in practice, but reports around the injury haven't shared that optimism, and apparnetly neither does Jerry.

So who starts if Smith and Smith can't go?

We’d likely be looking at Chuma Edoga getting the nod at left tackle and a rookie, either Asim Richards or T.J. Bass, starting at left guard.

That's not a good situation for Dallas. Edoga played well in a very limited sample (55 snaps) at left guard last year, but before that we had a 756-snap sample telling us that he was not very good as a New York Jet. He was especially poor as a pass protector, which isn’t exactly what you want on Dan Prescott’s blindside.

At guard, Richards was a fifth-round pick and Bass was an undrafted free agent. Neither were brought onto the roster with the expectation of being ready to start in Week 1, but one of them will be forced to.

Bass probably played better than RIchards in the preseason, but he also took every single one of his snaps at right guard, and Richards obviously has the higher draft pedigree working in his favor, so my money's on it being Richards that gets the start if Tyler Smith can't.

Playing with a pair of underwhelming backups in the starting lineup would make thing particularly tough for Dak Prescott and Tony Pollard to kick off the season, but even with this news the Cowboys remain favored by more than a field goal on the road against the Giants — which tells you something about how much of a mismatch this game would be if Dallas was helathy.

Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.