Don’t look now, but the Dallas Cowboys could very well have two new starters along the interior of their offensive line in 2020. Training camp is just getting underway, but it look as if Joe Looney and Connor McGovern are already on the fast track to start when the season finally gets underway.
Mike McCarthy: Left guard Connor Williams is still coming off injury so he's not a full-go to start camp. Joe Looney is taking first-team center snaps. Connor McGovern is getting the work at left guard
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) August 12, 2020
In a shortened offseason it’s not all that surprising to see Joe Looney and Connor McGovern getting work with the first-team offensive line as training camp gets underway. Looney is the most logical choice to replace Travis Frederick like he did back in 2018 and McGovern is the next man up with Connor Williams still not ready to go after sustaining an ACL injury late in the 2019 season. Interestingly enough, it’s hard to see this changing before the season gets underway.
Joe Looney may be challenged in time for the starting job at center by Tyler Biadasz, but the Dallas Cowboys simply don’t have time to see how this position battle might play out like they could in a normal offseason. They need to get their offense up to speed as quickly as possible, meaning the proven veteran likely wins out.
What would’ve been a position battle between Connor McGovern and Connor Williams could be squashed as well. Williams hasn’t had time to work his way back from his ACL injury last year with the Cowboys training staff, which means McGovern is most likely the de facto starter at LG to start the season.
Sadly, the Dallas Cowboys have to get the offensive line and the rest of the offense up and running as quickly as possible. They don’t have time to wait for Connor Williams to fully recuperate or for Tyler Biadasz to grasp how things are done in the NFL. That’s why it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Joe Looney and Connor McGovern remain with the Cowboys first-team OL unit.
Things of course could change as the season progresses, but for now the Cowboys have little time to let things sort themselves out. They need to go with who they believe is the best possible option right now in order to put the most competitive team on the field to start the 2020 season. It may be a short-term solution, however, that’s the way things stand due to the unprecedented interruption the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic has had on the NFL.
