The best way to live life is to make lemonade out of lemons, and that’s how the Cowboys ended up with their vaunted Death Star Line.  Back last decade when Romo held our balls to the fire and squeezed out the worst contract in franchise history, we had to gut our o-line and put Romo on the Russell Wilson plan.  That obviously didn’t work, so we tried to save his ass by going o-line first round in three straight drafts.

Tyron Smith, Travis Frederick, and Nick Martin anchored our line to one of the most dominant 5 year stretches in o-line history.  They weren’t great enough to save Romo (nobody is), but they’ve been immensely helpful in developing Dak into a perennial MVP candidate.  They are the only players of the Garrett era who belong in the Ring of Honor.

Father Time is undefeated however, and he struck early this spring when Travis Frederick retired from GBS.  Frederick was still good, but his official retirement statement explains that he was worried about slipping into a Witten-type presence that ends up hurting the team.  He will be missed.  Fortunately, a clone of him just graduated from Wisconsin as the top rated center and inexplicably fell to the fourth round.  Per WalterFootball…

Many haters point to Tyron Smith, who misses games ever year, as the next victim in Father’s Time crosshairs.  NFL executives disagree, ranking him as the unequivocal #1 lineman in the league.  It doesn’t matter even if he were to fall off because according to PFF’s newly released rankings, La’el Collins is a top 5 tackle.  He has finally earned his Death Star stripes.  Talk about an ultimate lemon to lemonade story!

Collins was a top 10 prospect of 2015, but became a UDFA after someone murdered his pregnant ex-girlfriend the night before the draft.  The OG Death Star trio invited him to Jerry’s house for a recruitment dinner, and he pounced on the opportunity to follow under their tutelage.  Jerry was particularly impressed by the fact that La’el Collins is an Eagle Scout, which is the same reason I never believed Throatzilla’s claims later that summer that Collins stiffed her on services to eat his ass out.

At first, Collins was dominant in his natural position at guard, but we took a few years to develop him at tackle for the long term good of the Death Star.  The plan has come to fruition now and Cowboys fans should be ecstatic.  I don’t want to get too hyperbolic because Larry Allen might just be the best football player ever, but Collins is the closest to a Larry Allen clone we’ve ever seen.

La’El Collins serves up his pancakes in stacks 🥞 @70LaelCollins pic.twitter.com/7sVnOLPdDn

— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) March 9, 2020

Am I happy that La’el Collins’s ex-girlfriend was murdered the night before the draft?  Of course not!  That was a horrible tragedy.  But God works in mysterious ways, and he knows that pancakes are best served with lemonade.