via www.nfltouchdown.com

Not only did the Cowboys lose to the Packers this past Sunday, but they lost some players as well.

Starting right tackle, Marc Columbo, is most likely out for the season with a broken fibula on his left leg after severe contact with a Packer defender.

Columbo, up to that point, had not missed a start for the Cowboys and really was playing great. Last year, Dr. Z, the well-respected Sports Illustrated writer put Marc Columbo on his All-Pro team.

Columbo was recently signed to a long extension and he is obviously very upset with the setback.

After Columbo was lost, Dallas proceeded to allow a season high five sacks. Columbo was more than the right tackle, but also the emotional leader with a voice of a sailor. I listened to Marc Columbo on tape and he had a mouth nastier than rotten anchovy paste.

Columbo came to the Cowboys from the Bears after knee injuries shortened his time there. However, he came in 2006 and he earned his starting job in training camp and he did not stop starting till now.

Tackle Doug Free came in to replace Columbo, and hopefully he will start gelling with the remaining four lineman so that they can get back to the dominant form they had at the beginning of the year.

Now, when you break a bone in the leg that means your out for the season typically, but Wade Phillips has said that Columbo may have a shot at coming back, so he may not be placed on injured reserve.

Injured reserve is a list of players that the team makes up. These players are severely injured, most likely out for the season. The action of putting players on injured reserve means that the player cannot play this season. Even if he should get healthy enough later on during the year to play, he cannot play.

Injured reserve is separate from the 53 man roster. It was made that way in case a team had a ’series of unfortunate events’ and the team needs to continually have enough men to play for the team.

By putting Columbo on injured reserve, the team will have an extra roster spot so they can pick up another player, but on the condition that Columbo cannot play at all for the rest of the regular season or postseason as well.

I, however, don’t see Columbo avoiding injured reserve though. We are going into week 11 now and it could take four to five weeks minimum for Columbo to recover. Then, he’s got to be careful coming back from the injury or he could injure it again.

This was the worst thing that could have happened. Dallas has great backups at every position except offensive line and Jerry Jones was concerned about that from the start.

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