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Cowboys place Jaylon Smith on reserve/non-football list

Jaylon Smith
Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

The Dallas Cowboys knew that Jaylon Smith was not likely to play much in 2016. On Tuesday, the team made a move that will keep the second-round linebacker out of action for at least six weeks.

“The Cowboys have placed rookie linebacker Jaylon Smith on the reserve/non-football list, which officially knocks him out for the first six weeks of the regular season,” said ESPN’s Todd Archer. “The chances of Smith playing at all in 2016 remain slim because of two torn ligaments and nerve damage in his left knee suffered in Notre Dame’s bowl game last January.”

This is certainly not surprising. Smith suffered a serious injury in the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State. Had that not happened, the Notre Dame linebacker would have likely been a top-five pick.

Smith can conceivably return to action as soon as Dallas’ Week 8 game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Still, the reality is that the Cowboys and their fans should not expect to see him during the 2016 season at all. Smith’s injury was gruesome and usually injuries like that take more than a year to recover from.

Dallas’ final regular season game this season falls on January 1, which will be the one-year anniversary of Smith’s injury.

As long as he suffers no setbacks to his injury, anything that Dallas gets out of Smith in 2016 will be a positive.

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