Cowboys ‘keep hands around’ Leighton Vander Esch following linebacker’s potential career-ending neck injury

FRISCO, Texas —  Dallas Cowboys linebacker Leighton Vander Esch has an enormous determination to make about his soccer long term following his moment season-ending neck injury. He suffered the injury throughout the staff’s 42-10 loss on the San Francisco on “Sunday Night Football” in Week 5, and it has endured to linger, which is why the Cowboys are shutting him down for the remainder of the 2023 season. 

He underwent a fusion process after being knocked out of the general 9 video games of the 2019 season as a result of a neck injury. Vander Esch additionally fractured his collarbone within the 2020 season. His neck accidents date to his school years at Boise State when he ignored time in 2016 with a pinched nerve in 2016. Dallas nonetheless selected him nineteenth general within the 2018 NFL Draft. Vander Esch earned his lone Pro Bowl variety as a rookie. Now, the Cowboys are doing their preferrred to beef up Vander Esch as he mulls over the opportunity of retiring and prioritizing his long-term well being over staying within the NFL. 

“We’ve had a couple conversations,” Cowboys head trainer Mike McCarthy stated Wednesday. “He’s still obviously processing it, but the most important thing from the football staff and the locker room is to have him here [to support him]. This is not just a conversation or one talk. I think the biggest thing is to give him the time and space to sort through this. This isn’t the first time he has been through it, he has a history of it. What’s in front of him personally. All of those things factor. I definitely want him to be part of this moving forward.”

“It’s tough, Leighton is a huge, not only on this defense, but on the team,” Cowboys protection Jayron Kearse stated. “Just to see a guy that puts so much into it, trying to help us succeed as well as him succeeding, it’s tough to lose a guy and a teammate like that. We’re all putting our hands around Leighton, and Leighton is a strong guy. He doesn’t show it a lot, but we’re continuing to keep our hands around him and just let him know you’re here for him.”

Kearse gave peek in the back of a curtain into Vander Esch’s potential components into his determination, together with the kid he and his spouse Maddy.

“Definitely,” Kearse stated when requested if Vander Esch’s injury led to him to take into consideration his soccer mortality. “We’re fathers, brothers, sons. This is a small portion of our life when it comes down to playing this sport. We’ve been doing it for so long, but you just have to understand the amount of years you spend playing football, you’re going to have many more years where you’re not playing football. I have kids. Leighton is expecting. It’s just a lot of different things you have to think about when it comes down to him. You say a lot when you’re young, but as you get older, you understand that this work and the things that we have outside of this are things you can’t duplicate and money can’t buy. Family and those types of things. You have to think about those impacts a lot when it comes down to your decisions dealing with an injury that severe and most recently with his injury situation.

“It’s difficult to take care of, and it isn’t me in my view coping with it. So, I will’t even consider the emotions and the ideas that is going thru his head to need to take care of one thing of that magnitude. All we will be able to do on this construction is stay our palms round him and let him know that we beef up him. That we are right here for him.”   

Markquese Bell and the next-man-up mentality

The Cowboys were coping with accidents at linebacker since coaching camp when 2023 third-round decide linebacker DeMarvion Overshown went down with a torn ACL. The participant who has since stepped up probably the most in his position to obtain important linebacker snaps is second-year, undrafted participant Markquese Bell, a security out of Florida A&M who used to be transformed to linebacker after that injury in camp. Now, Bell’s 86.4 defensive grade on Pro Football Focus makes him the eighth-highest graded linebacker within the NFL. His 87.8 PFF protection grade is the fifth-best within the league on the place. 

“Extremely proud [of Markquese],” Kearse stated. “Just a guy that came in, was ready to work and one day you just tell him ‘you’re going to work with the linebackers’ and to go out there and perform the way he’s performing, it’s tremendous. He hasn’t even played his best game yet. I’m excited to see what that looks like when he puts it all together. Coverage, run fits, tackling, making plays on the ball. Just all those types of things that are going to come along the more comfortable he gets playing a linebacker role.”

His 43 tackles are the second-most at the staff in the back of simplest fellow second-year linebacker Damone Clark, a 2022 fifth-round pick of LSU. 

“They’ve done a really good job, I think you have to be impressed,” McCarthy stated of the younger linebackers who’ve stepped up this season. “I think anytime you make changes in-season, players step up, and they have been extremely productive. It’s [their level of production] unique, but this is something we were dealing with in training camp. I think between the staff preparing the guys as far as converting to sub-packages and dealing with different fronts and so forth. This is how these seasons go. Sometimes you have a position that gets stressed more than others. We’re still working through a lot of things.”

“That’s my guy, me and Damone we came in together last year,” Bell stated. “We’re both learning, but we’re teaching each other things. I was a safety, so I’m trying to tell him stuff that the back end might be seeing from their perspective, and he can tell me ‘alright, this is what the front is doing.’ We’re giving each other game to help us grow.”   

Bell and Clark each credit Vander Esch’s mentorship for his ascension on the place.

“Leighton is a great mentor, great leader to this team,” Bell stated. “Him going down the way he did, it’s sad, but we love him, we’re praying for him. He’s on the sideline with us now, he’s like another coach. He was always that, but he’s definitely helping me find my way as a linebacker. He’s a great guy. It’s tough. He’s a leader. It’s a big loss. He was a big communicator. He was always getting everybody where they needed to be, especially me.”

“He has been in meetings with us, we have a group message, he always texts us whenever he can be there,” Clark stated. “He’s there. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the field or not. … Leighton is still pouring his heart out for us on the sideline, telling us the things that he sees and being a coach on the sideline for us.”

One of Vander Esch’s key educating issues to Bell and Clark is to unfastened their minds and play ball.

“‘Just play fast, and I’m going to make you right,'” Bell stated when requested what Vander Esch’s preferrred piece of recommendation has been to him. “That’s what I have been doing. It’s a family. We’re going to mistakes out there, we’re young. As long as you play fast, you trust your instincts and you put faith in the ability that God has given you. You can’t go wrong now that you know that you’re in it for the long haul.”

As for the lengthy haul that lifestyles is, everybody within the Cowboys locker room would perceive if Vander Esch selected to stroll clear of soccer.

“We talked to him when he first got hurt earlier in the year about just the decisions with football and life, just kind of reflecting on your perspective and how hard those decisions are to make,” Clark stated. “When you might have been enjoying soccer all you lifestyles, every so often that is the simplest factor that you simply actually know. I do know that for me, lifestyles and soccer are two essential issues, however clearly your well being is extra essential. I need so that you can stroll away by myself two ft. I do not need to have to stroll away as a result of I’m injured. It’s unlucky what came about with Leighton, however Leighton is a sturdy man. Leighton remains to be right here with us, he is simply now not at the box with us realizing him as you do.

“He’s a warrior when he goes out there, but you’ve got to value the big picture. It’s tough, especially that he had these injuries before. It’s hard he’s missing the rest of the season. That would be hard on anybody. Yeah, for me I saw walking away on your own two feet is way more important. That’s Leighton’s decision that he has to make.”

The Cowboys have the fourth-best scoring protection within the NFL in 2023, permitting simplest 18.3 issues consistent with sport, regardless of dropping Vander Esch in Week 5 and two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Trevon Diggs forward in their Week 3 sport towards the Arizona Cardinals when he tore his ACL in observe. Second-year, 2022 fifth-round decide cornerback DaRon Bland‘s 5 interceptions are the second-most within the NFL, together with a league-leading 3 pick-sixes (a Cowboys single-season report), and he additionally leads the NFL with the bottom passer ranking by contrast season, minimal 25 cross makes an attempt towards with 17.5 ranking. That has defensive coordinator Dan Quinn fired up and proud that his younger, former backups have shined by means of “honoring” Vander Esch and Diggs. 

“The ability to take the ball away it’s hard to minimize or even maximize that for guys who can do that specific trait on the outside and get the ball,” Quinn said Monday. “Tre and DaRon both have that skill about them. When you have that, that’s one of the unique things about them. They have this innate ability to find the ball in traffic and come down with it. Those are the things that make them special. We certainly miss Tre not being here but knowing the torch is passed for this season, just for this season, I think DaRon has gladly taken that. We talk about Tre a lot. Same with Leighton. I couldn’t be more pumped for guys who step up into those spaces. It’s a great way to honor them with how they play.”