Breaking: Cowboys La'el Collins To Undergo Season-Ending Surgery

The Dallas Cowboys Offensive Line Is Being Held Together By 'Glue And Duct Tape,' A Source Tells Us, And Now La'el Collins Is Facing Season-Ending Surgery

FRISCO -- What once was a rather shrouded truth about the training-camp conditioning of standout offensive lineman La'el Collins is now mushrooming into a problem with his hip that Dallas Cowboys sources say now requires season-ending surgery.

"He's a ways off,'' coach Mike McCarthy said on Monday regarding any sort of quick return from short-term IR for Collins. "But I think like any player that's on IR, unfortunately, you hope it doesn't get to that option (of surgery). Time will tell.''

The time is over. As Jane Slater of NFL Network was first to report that the path of rehab and treatment was not working for the starting right tackle, leaving hip surgery as the option.

The Dallas offensive line has been held together, as one source put it to CowboysSI.com, "by glue and duct tape'' in the early going of the 2020 NFL season with a series of injuries to offensive tackles, including problems for both starters in Tyron Smith (neck) and Collins, who was on PUP to start camp due to conditioning and in trying to work his way back in, somehow developed a hip problem that caused him to be placed on the three-week IR list.

Three weeks later, Cowboys COO Stephen Jones started the week saying Collins "is a little bit further away'' from returning.

"He's just working with a couple issues that he's trying to get right,'' Jones said. "I don't want to get into specifics of what his injuries are. (We're) working through all that with him, trying to get him in a place where he can play at a high level again."

That place never arrived.

In addition to the absence of Smith (who has missed the last two games but is planning to play Sunday in Week 4 against the Browns despite his neck problem) and Collins (who missed all three games), projected swing tackle Cam Erving is out with a knee injury. The Cowboys have been playing a pair of undrafted youngsters, Terence Steele and Brandon Knight, at the tackle spots - and at one point in the Week 3 loss at Seattle on Sunday, Steele left the game (possibly due to an illness) and All-Pro right guard Zack Martin slid over to right tackle.

Martin at tackle is not a permanent move, and Dallas is not rushing to re-examine its flirtation with free-agent guard Ron Leary, who nearly joined the team last week before he and the club failed to come to a contractual agreement.

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Instead, Tyron will return and Knight and Steele will compete for Collins' right tackle job, with new signee Jordan Mills maybe eventually joining the competition. (We're told that Knight inched ahead of Steele this week, but colleague Bryan Broaddus notes that Knight's superior ability to play left tackle might keep him as the "sixth man'' in case Tyron runs into trouble.)

"He's obviously dealing with something significant,'' McCarthy said of Collins. "We'll just continue to do the best we can and help him progress."

Where Collins has now "progressed'' is to the premature end of his 2020 NFL season.