Cowboys taking it easy with Sean Lee is their first big win of 2018

Sean Lee is sitting out of organized team activities at Dallas Cowboys OTAs, and it’s the right decision.

When you think about 32.8 percent, it doesn’t seem like that significant of a number. If someone had a completion percentage that low it might raise some eyebrows, but on the whole, it’s pretty mundane.

But when you consider that’s how much of Sean Lee’s career he’s spent on the bench with injuries, it starts to matter. He’s been in the league for almost a decade now, and at 32-years-old his body isn’t getting any younger. Since 2010 he’s missed over 40 games, including all of the 2014 season. That’s why the Cowboys decision to ease him back into offseason programs is the right move.

Lee has been at the first part of OTAs with the team, but he’s been limited in on the field drills. Ability is a buzzy word in football, but the best one — regardless of what sport you talk about — is availability, and he hasn’t been available for a huge chunk of his career.

Some might criticize and say the team is being overly cautious. That said, we’ve already seen two players elsewhere in the league suffer season-ending injuries during OTAs: Hunter Henry and Paul Worrilow both tore their ACL. Both are going to be very hard to replace, and they serve as cautionary offseason tales.

When a player, like Lee, has a history of injury it’s well worth taking caution during this time of the year.

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Lee is going to be a critical piece of the Cowboys championship puzzle in 2018, and it’s not rocket science to identify that the team is better when he’s on the field. Last year the Dallas defense struggled mightily, and there’s a new group of young linebackers looking for guidance as they try to take the torch into the next era.

Having Lee a part of that, rather than guiding from afar, is the most ideal for all involved.