Cowboys' secondary takes another hit: P.J. Locke tore his plantar fascia in Week 2
Dallas doesn't have a safety problem yet. It has the outline of one.
Yahoo Sports reports that Cowboys safety P.J. Locke suffered a torn plantar fascia in his right foot during the Week 2 game against the Washington Commanders. The same game also cost Dallas cornerback Cobie Durant, per Dallas News, and head coach Brian Schottenheimer had to address the damage Monday.
Two defensive backs. One afternoon. Same position group.
That's the part that matters more than either name. A torn plantar fascia isn't a clean break you tape and forget. It's the tissue along the sole of the foot, and it absorbs force every time a defensive back backpedals, plants, and drives on a receiver. Locke plays a position where that motion is the entire job.
So the timeline is the wrong thing to fixate on. The right thing is the snaps.
Dallas now has to fill them with players who were behind both men on the depth chart, in a secondary that got hit twice in one game. That isn't the next-man-up cliché. It's the second man up, and possibly the third. Secondary depth is a structural bet every team makes and every team hopes never gets tested twice in a week. Dallas just got tested twice in an afternoon.
Foot injuries also compound differently for defensive backs. The position punishes hesitation, and a player managing a plantar fascia has to hesitate — on the break, on the recovery, on the cut that decides whether a crossing route goes for eight yards or sixty.
The Cowboys' answer will come from the back end of the roster, and it will come fast. If Locke misses time, or returns at less than full function, Dallas is one more injury away from a real crisis in a group that's already bending.
That's the story here. Not one torn fascia. A depth chart being asked to do something it wasn't built to do.
