Leighton Vander Esch’s early retirement continues unfortunate pattern with Cowboys LBs

All the best to Leighton Vander Esch in life after football.

Leighton Vander Esch has retired from football at just 28 years old. This untimely end to his playing career can’t help but make Cowboys fans think of Sean Lee, Jaylon Smith, and other linebackers who saw their time cut short, or at least significantly hampered, by medical issues. It’s an unfortunate reality of the game but with an excessive degree of occurrence in Dallas.

Though he was already released last week to get a jump on the salary cap space, Vander Esch’s unsurprising retirement was likely why that happened. There was talk that the neck issues which cost him 12 games in 2023, and have been plaguing his career since 2019, could now be career-threatening. This announcement only confirms what many have expected, especially after Dallas signed veteran Eric Kendricks as a probable replacement.

With all that’s happened since Vander Esch’s rookie season, many may have forgotten what an immediate sensation he was in 2018. He defied draft-day criticisms of being too raw to help immediately, being named a Second-Team All-Pro and making the Pro Bowl. He was regarded as a new foundation piece for the Cowboys’ defense for years to come.

But early the next year, the cervical issues started to manifest. Vander Esch played through them for a while but it was clear that the fear of worsening the condition was affecting his aggression and effectiveness on the field. He wound up missing seven games and had corrective surgery in December. He would return in 2020 but broke his collarbone in Week 1, leading to another long absence stretch. Things were looking up from there; no games missed in 2021 and only three in 2022. But that injury was a neck stinger, and then restarted the cycle that cost him most of last season and led to this week’s announcement.

Even when healthy a couple of years ago, Vander Esch never got back to the elite potential that he showed as a rookie. Between that and the many missed games, it’s all felt painfully familiar to Cowboys fans who’ve had high hopes for other linebackers over the last decade plus.

Sean Lee is the one that hurts the most because the ceiling was so incredibly high. He was a First-Team All-Pro in 2016 and a two-time Pro Bowler, and he likely would’ve found his way back to both many, many times if he’d stayed healthy. Lee’s instincts for the position were as good as they come; diagnosing plays with ease and being surprisingly dangerous in coverage. He was good enough to spend 11 seasons in Dallas despite missing 58 games throughout his career, mostly due to knee injuries but having multiple unrelated issues as well.

There was also a time, lest we forget, that Jaylon Smith seemed like the next big thing at linebacker. Considered a top-five talent in the 2016 draft class, Smith fell to Dallas in the second round due to concerns about the severity of the knee injury he suffered at the end of his college career. Both things proved true within a few years; Smith was one of the NFL’s top linebackers from 2018-2019 but then the wheels came off quickly. Smith was clearly not the same player beginning in 2020, his leg issues slowing him down and the desperation showing in his decision-making. He was released just four weeks into 2021 and has since bounced around the league without any real impact.

Lee, Smith, and Vander Esch are the big three in this discussion, but even some less notable names have been part of this pattern. DeVonte Holloman, a sixth-round pick in 2013, was one of the stars of camp and preseason as a rookie but suffered a neck injury in practice. He’d shown good things late into that year but injured his neck again the following preseason, leading to his retirement just a few weeks later. We only saw flashes of Holloman’s potential, but they were very bright.

More recently, Jabril Cox was an exciting addition from the 2021 draft. He made immediate noise as a rookie but tore his ACL in Week 8. While he was able to return midway through the 2022 season, Cox had lost ground to Damone Clark on the LB depth chart and was unable to recapture that rookie momentum. He didn’t even make the team last year, getting waived at final cuts and winding up in Washington.

Cox’s release was especially surprising after Dallas had already lost another LB prospect, DeMarvion Overshown, to a preseason ACL injury. Drafted in the third round last April, Overshown hit the ground running and seemed poised for a spot in the Cowboys’ rotation. We’ll have to wait and see if Overshown makes a more successful recovery than some of the others we’ve mentioned here, but the lost rookie season still hurt Dallas in 2023.

Much of this is just circumstantial. The Holloman, Cox, and Overshown injuries are just part of football, as were some of the things that caused Lee and Vander Esch to miss games at times. But in the case of the big three, all of them had medical red flags coming out of college. Jaylon Smith’s were far more known, given his profile and the fears for his career, but Lee had knee issues at Penn State and Vander Esch was already wearing a neck brace at Boise State.

For Lee and Smith, medical concerns are why they were available as second-round picks. Their ability was undeniable, but Dallas accepted the risks when they drafted them and got exactly what they paid for. So if there is a lesson to be learned from this pattern, it goes back to the importance of availability being considered in balance with talent.

Leighton Vander Esch didn’t want to be part of this narrative any more than the others did, and it was outside of their control. Football’s a dangerous game and everyone’s a bad hit away from some really tough decisions. You can only give your best while you can, and Vander Esch was very much like Sean Lee, Jaylon Smith, and others who showed their special talent as much as their bodies allowed. We were all cheated out of what should’ve been a much greater career.