Never broken: Inside Cowboys CB Jourdan Lewis’ inspiring return from urgent foot surgery (2024)

FRISCO — Jourdan Lewis was fractured, dislocated and torn. His right foot curved like a banana, angling inward about 45 degrees. Bone pushed against skin. Skin pushed against shoe. A stadium X-ray underscored the need for urgent surgery, prompting an on-call medical team to be summoned.

Thirteen months ago, the Cowboys nickel cornerback suffered an injury that threatened his football career.

Lewis did what he’s long done. He fought.

When the Cowboys host the Washington Commanders on Thanksgiving, arguably the most impressive feat won’t be a Dak Prescott pass, CeeDee Lamb catch or Micah Parsons sack. It will be Lewis overcoming a midfoot fracture and dislocation to play his 10th game of the season.

While team officials readily acknowledge Lewis made a remarkable return from a severe Lisfranc injury, the situation’s full nature has, to date, gone unreported. Lewis authorized The Dallas Morning News access to his medical records and green-lit interviews with his surgeon, Dr. Eugene Curry, and the Cowboys’ director of rehabilitation, Britt Brown.

For added perspective, X-rays of Lewis’ foot were shared with three independent, board-certified orthopedic surgeons.

All five professionals commended Lewis for achieving this much activity, this soon. A fracture-dislocation of the midfoot with complete dislocation of the tarsometatarsal joints is commonly a high-energy injury, associated with a highway collision or fall from a substantial height.

“To be honest with you, there’s probably a lot of guys who wouldn’t have come back from that,” Brown said. “When that initially happened, his career was immediately in jeopardy. That’s why we immediately went to the hospital. Very rarely with a foot injury do you have immediate surgical needs, but that was so bad, it needed to be taken care of right off the bat.

“I have to tell you this: There was never a doubt in my mind or Jourdan’s mind that he was going to play again because of Jourdan Lewis and the way he’s made up. Some of that is his size, a little bit undersized. He has a chip on his shoulder over that. … You’ve got to fight for everything you’ve got.”

Said defensive coordinator Dan Quinn: “If there was one person to bet on to say, ‘That one would make it back,’ it may be him because of his tenacity, his effort. He’s like a little pit bull. He’s a fighter.”

‘Scrappy’

Michael Gallup remembers the first time he competed against Lewis in 2018, back when Gallup was a rookie and Lewis was entering his second season. Not knowing Lewis yet on a personal level, the Cowboys wide receiver admits with a laugh he didn’t like his 5-10, 190-pound teammate much.

All that chippiness in practice.

All that trash talk.

“I came from Colorado State,” Gallup said. “I wasn’t used to guys talking like that. … He’s always been scrappy. He’s always had that mindset, ‘Yeah, I might be a [smaller] guy from what you see, but I’m going to play like I’m 6-7.’ That’s just his mentality.”

Lewis believes his approach to competition and the foot injury are intertwined. The intensity stems from a childhood in Detroit, he said, growing up with his mother and sister. While developing a work ethic and persistence from his mom’s example, little came easy.

“At a young age, I noticed there was nobody who was going to come and live my life for me or save me,” Lewis said. “I knew, at every point in my life, I had to fight for what I wanted, against all odds. Nobody is going to do it for me. Just playing football, any sport, struggles at home, I knew I had to create my own story.

“There was just one way to go, and it was forward. … I just went to work.”

That resolve strengthened at age 16, he said, when the family was evicted from their home, leading them to live with an aunt. He promised himself not to allow his mother to experience that feeling again. He spent Saturdays in high school attending 7-on-7 passing league tournaments rather than socializing casually with friends. In college, he said, sacrifices continued, including extra workouts between ones that were assigned.

The physical size of whomever he needed to tackle or cover became immaterial.

“He’s a honey badger,” left guard Tyler Smith said.

A first-team All-American at Michigan, Lewis was not drafted in 2017 until the third round in part because of his size, which made him better suited for nickel cornerback than the boundary. Feeling slighted by the draft fall, he joined the Cowboys eager to prove himself.

The pit bull barked at the team’s boisterous wide receivers, a group that included Dez Bryant. Incessant trash talk between Lewis and Bryant, a three-time Pro Bowler, famously led then-coach Jason Garrett to hold a one-on-one drill between them during a 2017 regular-season practice. The entire team watched, as the 6-2 Bryant vaulted over Lewis, high-pointing and catching a fade-route pass.

The rookie did not flinch.

“Do it again,” Lewis shouted. “Do it again.”

“That’s been J Lew since the moment he got here,” right guard Zack Martin said. “He jumped off the tape, just being a tenacious, all-day player. That’s the stuff you need when you’re going through the dark days when you’re by yourself rehabbing.”

Emergency surgery

It happened Oct. 23, 2022.

The Cowboys hosted, of all opponents, the Detroit Lions, Lewis’ hometown team that twice passed on him during the draft. Dallas led 10-6 in the fourth quarter. On third-and-12, Lewis made a play that changed the game and forever his right foot.

Based on his preparation, Lewis knew the Lions’ third-and-long tendencies. Those included stick routes where Lions receivers sprint to a depth near the first-down marker and turn back for the football. Lewis anticipated that route concept in zone coverage. As wide receiver Tom Kennedy planted at the top of his route, Lewis dived in front and intercepted Jared Goff.

“I was excited,” Lewis said. “I’m like, ‘Yes. I’m playing Detroit. Both of my uncles are here. They’re going to love this, man. I’m going to bring back the ball to them.’ [I thought about] all of that. People don’t understand we can process that fast. Then I’m like, ‘Get up. Go score. Go score.’

“I got up, and I tried to run. As soon as I ran, I felt the receiver jump on my back and slide off.”

With his right hand, Kennedy punched at the football from behind, unsuccessfully attempting to force a fumble. Kennedy rolled to the ground, and his right hip area landed on Lewis’ right heel just as Lewis planted his right foot to cut left on his interception return.

Eugene Curry, a Dallas-based Carrell Clinic orthopedic surgeon who specializes in ankle and foot, is not the most avid Cowboys game viewer in his house. That’s his wife, Ana Katherine, and older daughter, Nicole, who both cheer for the hometown team and monitor potential injuries that might send him into work mode.

Phone calls are rare, but they happen. He repaired quarterback Dak Prescott’s open ankle fracture on Oct. 11, 2020.

The Cowboys were about to call again.

Lewis briefly attempted to walk off the field but didn’t make it far, bone pressing against skin and shoe from the inside. Team medical staff, including head athletic trainer Jim Maurer, head team physician Dr. Dan Cooper and team physician Dr. Mark Muller, quickly recognized the severity.

A cart shuttled Lewis to an X-ray machine near the locker room. Results were sent to Curry.

Surgery preparations mobilized.

Muller accompanied Lewis to North Central Surgical Hospital in Dallas. Curry consulted with Muller and Cooper before the two-hour procedure; Muller also was in the operating room. Typically, Curry said, surgery for a Lisfranc injury can wait a day or until the next week, but this was “one of the most severe ones” he’d encountered because of the amount of trauma and impending swelling.

Any delay on surgery would allow the trauma to swell further into the skin.

“It’s almost as if the next step would have been the skin would have broken, and the bones would have been sticking out,” Curry said. “He came that close to that severity of an injury.”

Curry used a cordless drill to perform what is called a definitive fixation, using plates and screws to realign Lewis' foot. The titanium equipment was removed five months later in a second, planned March surgery.

Surrounded by family, Curry will watch Lewis on Thanksgiving.

“That’s what we do this for, right?” Curry said. “It gives me personal satisfaction to put something like this foot back together, and to see him do well makes me extremely happy. Very proud. Very happy. But he’s really a super achiever. I could have done something like this in someone else and that guy may not have been walking ever in a different situation.

“I think it just requires a very dedicated player and team of rehab specialists to get him back to do this.”

The other side

Foot trauma was his opponent.

Lewis challenged it early.

Not long after surgery, Lewis received a schedule of prescribed pain medications to administer at home. He received very clear instructions on how to take them.

“I didn’t listen,” Lewis said. “I’m not taking no pain medicine. The first night, I didn’t take it. ‘Oh, my, God. This is mind-sheering pain.’ It was crazy. I probably had a migraine, how bad it was.”

He came to respect the challenge ahead.

The 27-year-old’s journey back to the field was full of adversity. He considers the next several weeks a blur, bouncing in and out of consciousness, zonked out on the pain relievers he learned to take. From bed, he killed time killing “Call of Duty” video-game avatars. He awoke some evenings screaming from pain while keeping his right foot elevated at all times.

He didn’t resume walking, he said, until late February.

That is also when he and Britt Brown got to work.

They started with walking and gradually built from there. Lewis’ skin needed to heal still from both the injury and two surgeries. Brown has cellphone photos he took in the spring of the skin’s slow progress.

“They’re horrible, like a shark bit his foot,” Brown said. “It took forever for it to heal. Foot injuries are difficult already because they’re so far from your heart, so the return blood flow is slow. The wound doesn’t heal well. That is why diabetics have such issues with losing their toes and that kind of stuff. …

“This was a bad deal. Everybody thinks that he just had a Lisfranc. They think he had a simple injury. It was not simple at all.”

In late June and early July, Lewis turned the corner.

As a precaution, the Cowboys withheld him from the start of training camp and first game, but he began the season on the 53-man active roster and made his debut in Week 2. His achievement afforded the Cowboys an experienced nickel cornerback when DaRon Bland slid to the boundary in Week 3 to replace Trevon Diggs (ACL injury).

Lewis says he has a “new foot” now.

The old one is gone, never to return. Returning to football meant learning to live with stiffness and discomfort. Quietly, each week, he works through that normal and a demanding job description that calls for twitchy reactivity to receivers’ movements in space.

In Week 5, Lewis broke up a third-down pass and forced and recovered a fumble on San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey. In Week 7, he played all 63 defensive snaps against the Los Angeles Rams, whose wide receivers were stifled. On Sunday, he forced another fumble in a win over the Carolina Panthers, the ball bouncing off — go figure — his right midfoot and out of bounds.

He has reason to be thankful on Thanksgiving.

“Honestly, the entire experience,” Lewis said. “I think about it all the time. It really made me a better football player and a better professional for it. I sacrificed a lot to come back and be able to perform at the level I am, perform at the level I knew I can. You have to prepare a lot for my foot and compensating for different things and getting used to it. …

“It made me prepare better and be grateful for every opportunity I have because it can be taken away.”

Lewis was fractured, dislocated and torn.

Never broken.

“This is a very high-energy injury, atypical of what you’d have from a football field. This is like a high-speed motor vehicle accident, motorcycle accident, fall from a height-type of injury. It’s a midfoot fracture-dislocation. This is the granddaddy of Lisfrancs. … This is not typical. It’s a big deal. Kudos, great job [to] surgery, recovery. This guy should be thankful.”

— Dr. David Chao, orthopedic sports medicine surgeon and former San Diego Chargers head team physician; founder of Sports Injury Central

“When I see something like that, it’s bad. It’s a bad injury. ... Usually, you’d imagine it’s a car accident or something with pretty heavy trauma in order to have an injury with that appearance. It’s not what you’d expect from football. ... There are fractures. There are dislocations of multiple joints where the bones are not aligned properly. Seeing that, you know it takes a lot of energy to cause that much damage or to move those bones out of place. ... It’s really impressive that he is back that quick and back at all. It definitely would be a career-threatening injury.”

— Dr. Kenneth Jung, orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles and consultant to the Los Angeles Rams

“Without any context, to me, this looks like a high-energy injury to the right foot. There’s a fracture and dislocation of the midfoot, Lisfranc joints. ... I would associate that with a car accident or fall, 10 to 12 feet, maybe higher. ... When you have a conversation with somebody with that degree of injury, the risk of developing post-traumatic arthritis and further limitation from that, especially when you consider somebody that’s a high-level athlete, is very real. ... The fact that he’s back out there playing is nothing short of a miracle and probably a big testament to his fortitude as well.”

— Dr. Nicholas Strasser, orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon and assistant professor of orthopedics at Vanderbilt University

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