Dallas Cowboys All-Pro right guard Zack Martin will miss the rest of the season after undergoing surgery on his ankle, head coach Mike McCarthy announced Thursday.
Martin, 34, has missed the Cowboys' last two games due to ankle and shoulder injuries. He appeared in 10 games this season but hasn't looked like the future Hall of Famer we've grown accustomed to seeing throughout his 11-year career.
There have been rumblings that this would be Martin's final season. McCarthy said Thursday that the veteran offensive lineman will take some time to weigh his football future.
"I think you just have to take a step back and deal with one thing at a time and that's frankly the conversation that Zack and I had," McCarthy said. "The focus is really about the surgery, what's next. And I think those are all questions that I'm sure that will be asked or will be thought about.
"But he really, in my conversations with him, his focus is on getting the surgery and trying to do the best he can with his ankle because, obviously, this is I think he third surgery he'll have on that ankle."
The Cowboys restructured Martin's contract prior to the season to free up salary cap space and spread his cap hit over the 2025 and 2026 seasons, according to Todd Archer of ESPN. Martin held out of training camp in 2023 and received a new deal worth more than $18 million over the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
If this is the end of Martin's run, he'll retire as one of the greatest offensive linemen in NFL history. Martin is a seven-time First-Team All-Pro, a two-time Second-Team All-Pro, a nine-time Pro Bowler, and a member of the NFL's 2010 All-Decade Team.