The Dallas Cowboys have had a tough start to camp as injuries are piling up. We reported on Tuesday about Robert Jones and his broken neck injury impacting the progress of first-round selection Tyler Booker, but now we have another offensive line injury as Tyler Guyton will miss 4-6 weeks with a bone fracture.

The initial diagnosis for Guyton was much, much worse. The initial fear was that Guyton would miss the entire season with a torn ACL. Thankfully, the MRI results showed his ACL was intact and he only fractured a bone that caused Guyton to go down on a pass play in team drills.

Guyton is the starting left tackle of the Cowboys, arguably one of the most important positions on a football team. Guyton’s responsible for protecting the blindside of Dak Prescott, the franchise quarterback garnering $60 million per year. With Prescott’s injury history, it’s important to keep the offensive line upright and healthy so you can do the same for Prescott.

Guyton struggled in his rookie season, especially in pass protection. Guyton allowed six sacks and had a 49.4 overall grade from Pro Football Focus in his rookie year. Thankfully, four of those six sacks were relinquished in the first month of his rookie year, but last year showed he needed to improve drastically if this team was making a playoff push.

Guyton doesn’t fill small shoes in Dallas, either. Guyton replaced a 5-time All-Pro in Tyron Smith, who will surely be enshrined in Canton someday at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. So going from a legendary left tackle in Tyron Smith to a rookie tackle struggling to adjust to the NFL is not a fair comparison.

Not only did Guyton struggle adjusting to the professional level, but he played right tackle in college at Oklahoma. For an offensive tackle to switch sides, everything is different and it takes time to alter your playing style. From your pre-snap stance, to how you approach the opposition, it’s not as easy as it sounds. It shouldn’t surprise anyone Guyton needed a chance to get acquainted to the NFL level and to the left side of the offensive line.

While this injury isn’t as devastating as a season-ending ACL tear, it does set Tyler Guyton back in his development and it will require close attention from the coaching staff. His time to improve before the season got cut drastically short.

If there’s anyone who needed the training camp and preseason reps, it was Tyler Guyton. He’ll now return to the field sometime in September and he’ll have to pick up where he left off while the season is already underway and there’s little to no room for error.

Guyton has a chance to return for the opening night tilt on September 4th against the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. If he’s not ready for Week 1, he’ll have ten days of rest before the Cowboys play the New York Giants. While the Giants aren’t a team many respect, their pass rush consists of Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux, Chauncey Golston, Dexter Lawrence II, and first-round pick Abdul Carter. The offensive line will have no easy snaps against that defensive front and the entire line will have to be at full force for that divisional matchup.

You can win or lose football games in the trenches, on the offensive or the defensive side of the ball. With the news of Jones being out and Guyton now down, this could impact the chemistry this unit has and if they aren’t firing on all cylinders, the first couple weeks of the season could be a rude awakening for the Cowboys. And the last thing you want is to put your quarterback in danger, or go 0-2 in your division right out of the gate, and the Cowboys might be faced with both of those nightmares coming true.

Overall, it’s a sigh of relief for Cowboys Nation to hear Tyler Guyton will be available during the 2025 season. It definitely beats the alternative, but this could still be considered a devastating blow for the Dallas Cowboys in Brian Schottenheimer’s early coaching career.

We discussed in great detail the impact of Robert Jones and Tyler Guyton’s injuries on Dad and Da ‘Boys for the Star Studded Cowboys Network, powered by Fans First Sports Network.