The brace he is wearing is not the same as a knee brace. Players don't put on knee braces in order to play on a 70% healed torn ACL. They wear them for protection against another injury. Smith's brace is being worn out of necessity because he can't fully move his foot up and down. Those are two very different situations. And its not really the brace, its like I said. He is continuing to progress in the right direction and I think he should get closer to fully recovered before he plays in live action. He may never fully recover but I just think getting to the point where he no longer needs the brace is a logical point to begin to think about him playing. If his progress stalls short of that point, then fine, let him give it a go. He is too important to the team to rush him back when he is headed in the right direction. Give it a little more time if needed to shed the brace and truly be ready to make an impact.
The 'black magic' part of the Jaylon situation is over a while ago.
He has been steadily improving for months.
Some of us think that started around Oct with his magical tweets.
In fact, some of us who spent a lot of effort looking into this have sort of 'lost interest' because it is mostly now PATIENTLY waiting to see how close he gets to preinjury...
We now have been even told of the toes milestone.
As I understand, the start of the toe function comes significantly after the start of the dorsiflex function.
I think the FO has verified both toe lifting and foot lifting.
As MDs have stated, he may never regain 100% nerve recovery, but 100% nerve recovery is not necessary.
There are other muscles/nerves involved including ones that account for most of (if not all) pushoff as well as a lot of the cutting ability etc.
Furthermore, all reports are that he is steadily improving.
This is probably a pretty routine case at this point.
So I think we can all relax about it.
The team MDs should be more than equipped to make sure Jaylon is not rushed back too early.
The Cowboys will not risk their huge investment in Jaylon.
They have said last season that he could have played in the playoffs at a high level with the brace.
But they chose to hold him out probably because they were risk adverse.
Am I saying we get preinjury Jaylon?
No, we dont know exactly what we are getting as he is still improving.
At this point, though he may already be better than all our LBs except Lee.
If you want something to feel more optimistic about, remember the FO said his improvement appears to be accelerating (although they did not quantify that).
