ARLINGTON – The news was greeted with a great deal of excitement in Cowboys Nation, as it seems at midweek inside The Star that DaRon Bland was “practicing.”
That’s not exactly right … though once tamped down, some level of positivity for the Dallas Cowboys, their secondary, and the playmaking All-Pro cornerback, is merited.
Bland, of course, broken his foot at the end of the preseason and the stress fracture required surgery. The initial prognosis mentioned a timetable that might keep him out for as long as eight weeks. Half the season? Even with fellow star Trevon Diggs at one corner and promising rookie Caelen Carson at the other … that sounded like a long-term problem.
But maybe it’s a shorter-term problem than that.
This week, a promising sight for Cowboys: Bland was spotted – to our eyes for the first time – on the sideline and working on the resistance cords with trainers.
It has been inaccurately reported by the fan-boy sites that “Bland returned to practice.” That’s sloppy and it is wrong. But his presence represents a positive, and comes with hope that maybe – as he’s eligible to play in Week 5 – he won’t have to wait until Week 8 or 9 to be healthy enough to help.