Conventional wisdom says that wide receiver Michael Gallup won’t see the field when the Cowboys open their regular season schedule against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Gallup himself has been saying that for over a month as he rehabs from January’s ACL tear and February’s surgery to repair it.

But the closer it gets to Sunday night’s kickoff, the wider the Cowboys seem to want to leave the door cracked for a major surprise. Head coach Mike McCarthy is the latest in the organization to add to the apparent smokescreen that the team’s brain trust is currently blowing. On Thursday, he refused to definitively say that he won’t put the fifth-year man in.

“If he practices today,” McCarthy told reporters at The Star in Frisco, “we’ll talk about it.”

Gallup is getting closer, to be sure, as his return to practice this week demonstrated.

It's about a mile away, but Michael Gallup was back catching passes with the team. pic.twitter.com/7aV5ECQoYM

— Bobby Belt (@BobbyBeltTX) September 7, 2022

“I thought his workout was excellent, really, the last two days,” McCarthy said. “He has checked every box all the way along. He’s coming back. Physically, he looks really good, but we don’t have a timeframe. That will answer itself, but we’ve been very encouraged by the work.”

When the 53-man roster was released Aug. 30, the team elected not to keep Gallup on the Physically Unable to Perform list, where he’d been since the beginning of camp. That ostensibly means the Cowboys believe they’ll have him back in active duty within the first four games.

While that’s undeniably a promising sign, his presence in Week 1’s huddle still seems highly unlikely.

But not necessarily if you give weight to comments from Jerry Jones. Last week, the team owner proclaimed,”If it were the Super Bowl, he’d be playing. He’s that ready.”

Then this week, speaking on 105.3 The Fan, he allowed for a more cautious ramp-up. “He can do anything, I think, you ask of him right now. Anything. The issue is from a common sense one. The longer you wait, the better off you are [in regard to] having something recur.”

But when asked point-blank about whether the 26-year-old, now the team’s unquestioned No. 2 receiver, would play on opening night, Jones suddenly got cagey again.

“Don’t need to get into this business of playing the game of competition and not let the Bucs get prepared for him one way or the other,” Jones said. “You know, we planned all along for him not to be in the game. Let’s surprise them.”

Dallas’s unofficial depth chart even lists Gallup as the starter opposite CeeDee Lamb, adding to the intrigue. Nearly every voice of reason, though, fully expects to see rookie Jalen Tolbert or Noah Brown get the starting nod instead, both in Week 1 and Week 2, while Gallup gets up to game speed.

But the Cowboys, dangerously inexperienced at wide receiver overall, seem dead-set on using every bit of gamesmanship at their disposal in advance of hosting the Buccaneers.

Even though it’s pretty much unanimously believed that the team is bluffing about Gallup being ready to go, the Cowboys are going all-in on the ruse.

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