Mike McCarthy hinted that Michael Gallup could play for the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday

All has felt right in the world this week what with the normal rhymes and rhythms of the NFL regular season starting to settle in. Such will be the way our lives go for the next few months.

One of the bigger “wow, it’s really football season moments” came on Wednesday afternoon when the first injury report of the season was released for the Dallas Cowboys. It was fairly predictable with only two names on the Dallas side of things in wide receiver Michael Gallup and cornerback Jourdan Lewis.

Time will tell whether or not Lewis (hamstring) plays during Sunday night’s opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but we have all sort of resigned ourselves to the fact that Michael Gallup won’t be suiting up. A big reason for this is that Gallup himself said back during training camp that Week 1 was not going to happen, but that was a long time ago.

During his press conference on Thursday head coach Mike McCarthy stoked the flames a bit. McCarthy noted that he liked what he saw from Gallup during Wednesday’s practice and hinted that the wideout could actually play on Sunday night.

Michael Gallup tore his ACL back on January 2nd which means we are barely eight months into his recovery. We have certainly seen other players across multiple sports pull off incredible returns, but this has always felt unlikely.

It is highly possible that this is just a matter of McCarthy stoking flames in an effort to keep the Buccaneers on their toes. Remember that during the team’s broadcasted scrimmage ahead of the 2020 season that he had players’ names and numbers removed from their jerseys. Mike likes to hold whatever advantage he possibly can.

Perhaps though McCarthy is being truthful and circumstances have changed and it is now possible for Gallup to seriously play. We are just a few days away from finding out.