By my quick count, the Cowboys have lost via injury a collective 96 games among starters or players who would have started if they had been available to replace others who were injured.
This does include Frederick, but it does not include players who opted out, nor does it include the punter. I'm really trying not to skew or exaggerate the numbers. In that vein, I also didn't include all the instances where players were injured early and missed most of a game.
Even excluding Frederick, this equates to about 8 missed starters per game. Again, this includes Dalton, for instance, and Fleming -- guys who would have started a game if available, though they weren't starters entering the season.
This is no "next man up" situation -- a phrase often pablum for the brain as much as it is valid.
Cognitive dissonance is at work in some folks. If one argues for replacing a Jeff Heath or a Conner Williams, the argument is clearly acknowledging a need to improve the talent level at a specific position. One can hardly argue, then, that the loss of talent at other positions is irrelevant.
The Cowboys suffered significant injury losses at QB, TE, OT, OG, OC, DT, LB and CB. This kind of attrition isn't normal, neither is it repairable.
Others might imply I am taking the spotlight from coaching and organizational issues. That isn't true. I have watched the same failures others have watched.
But to contend it doesn't matter to your fortunes that your team has been riddled with injuries or that in a short week of preparation a member of the coaching staff collapses on-site and dies as players and coaches stand by in horror strikes me as willful stubbornness, at best, cluelessness at worst.
If I can't say, "Yeah but, there are injuries," surely others can't say, "Yeah but, the injuries are irrelevant."
And the tragedy of watching a relatively young man die... I met an old friend one time at a farmer's market. We hadn't seen each other in some time and had a long and pleasant conversation.
The next day I was on hand as he was recovered from a lake, his hands bound, his mouth gagged. Murdered. Being the only one on the site who knew him, I made the preliminary ID of the body. I still see his face in the occasional dream, smiling grotesquely at me from death as a result of the gag.
I'm no stranger to violence, instant death or the macabre, but I struggled to concentrate for a month following that shock. Watching helplessly as a team member -- a respected coach -- dies must have a similar impact.
This isn't a ballgame, folks.