NFL suspends Cowboys LB Rolando McClain 10 games

The troubled Cowboys linebacker will miss the first 10 games of the 2016 season.

Rolando McClain has had a bumpy ride through the NFL, to say the least. He began his career with the Oakland Raiders after being drafted 8th overall. The former Alabama Crimson Tide linebacker made an instant impact while in Oakland, notching the second-most tackles on the team in his rookie season.

After three years with the Raiders, he was benched for 4th round draft pick Miles Burris. Head coach Dennis Allen said the change was made due to McClain’s tendency to repeat mistakes, and Burris’s ability to correct errors on the second go-around. McClain took this hard and was involved in several off the field incidents that prompted the Raiders to let him go in 2013.

McClain signed with the Ravens in April of 2013, but retired in May, never playing a down.

After an injury to star LB Sean Lee, the Dallas Cowboys traded for McClain in July of 2014. It was viewed as a gamble, but McClain made an impact on the field that outweighed his negatives at the time.

According to Adam Schefter, McClain has been suspended for the first 10 games of the 2016 season.

This is the second year in a row that McClain has been suspended to begin the year. Before the 2015 season he had a knee surgery and a 4 game suspension that caused him to miss all of training camp, all preseason games, and of course, the first four games of the year.

This is a huge blow to the Dallas Cowboys as they struggle to keep defensive players happy and off IR. Sean Lee can’t do everything for the Cowboys, and it appears that Jerry Jones’s gamble with McClain might not have been as good of a move as it looked in 2014.

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