ARLINGTON, Texas — On the final offensive play of the first half for the Dallas Cowboys, boos started to rain down at AT&T Stadium as Cooper Rush’s third-down pass hit the turf. Rush had only completed 8 of 17 pass attempts for 36 yards (2.1 yards per attempt) against the Philadelphia Eagles. His most memorable play of the first half was fumbling a good shotgun snap deep in the Cowboys’ own territory that quickly led to the Eagles’ first touchdown.
The Cowboys only trailed 14-6 but hope for a functioning offense, especially through the air, looked bleak.
Of Rush’s 36 first-half passing yards, 26 were yards after the catch. CeeDee Lamb had four catches for just 13 yards in the first half — 11 of those yards came after the catch. The threat of even the most minuscule vertical passing game was nonexistent.
“Just didn’t play well enough,” Rush said. “We ran it well in the first half. We just didn’t capitalize some times down in the red zone. A couple good, long drives, defense gets a turnover and we don’t capitalize. It can snowball fast when you don’t take care of the ball as well. We already spotted them one early in the first quarter and then (another one) going in the end zone. Turnovers will always kill you and we had a chance with the defense playing well to overcome those coming out of halftime. We just didn’t.”
Rush is an easy target to blame after the Cowboys’ 34-6 loss. His early fumble was as aggravating as it was costly. His play inspired such little hope that late in the third quarter, head coach Mike McCarthy tried to use backup quarterback Trey Lance in specific packages. Soon thereafter, McCarthy handed the reins of the offense to Lance, who completed 4 of 6 passes for 21 yards and an interception.
Rush is a career backup in the NFL. Lance may not even be that.
As soon as Dak Prescott was ruled out for the foreseeable future and Rush was going to be the next man up, his 4-1 record from 2022 was bound to be a heavy talking point among Cowboys coaches and executives.
At best, it’s a line of thinking meant to sell hope to a fan base that’s ready to turn its attention to the draft. It’s a frightening proposition if the Cowboys believed Rush’s 2022 success was a reason this season still had any chance because this team gives Rush no chance.
That 2022 group was arguably one of Dallas’ best teams of the past three decades. It was a situation that was friendly for a backup quarterback to slide in and offer short-term relief. This 2024 team is one of the most underwhelming teams this side of the Tony Romo era. It might go down as a season remembered by devastating injuries, first to Micah Parsons, DaRon Bland and DeMarcus Lawrence, and most recently to Prescott.
Hindsight shouldn’t let this team off so easy.
“I don’t want to be sarcastic, but do you have the same arithmetic I’ve got?” Jerry Jones responded when asked if the lackluster offensive performance Sunday without Prescott elevated the quarterback’s perceived value. “We’ve won three games, with Dak. I’m just saying, we weren’t playing well with Dak. At all. There’s a lot to work on here and we’re all aware of that. It’s very concerning. It should get the kind of concern that we have to give it. That’s all there is to it. This is not acceptable.”
Injuries should not be allowed to scapegoat this year’s team, the way they often do the 2020 team. That season four years ago also gets remembered for a season-ending injury to Prescott, but what’s often lost in the shuffle is that those Cowboys were 1-3 going into their Week 5 matchup when Prescott was hurt.
Prescott’s first eight games should have served as a warning of what’s to come for the rest of this Cowboys season at the quarterback position. If the $60 million quarterback couldn’t get this offense rolling, why should there be an expectation that Rush will get this season on the rails, especially with the turnover issue remaining unresolved?
“Dak’s a great player, he’s a big part of it, but this is the National Football League,” McCarthy said. “That’s why you have the roster you have. You can’t win games turning the ball over five times. I don’t give a s— who lines up. That’s the part we got to get right, the giveaways. It took us out of that game in the second half.”
As it pertains to Lance, the storyline of his potential in Dallas is dead. It should have died Aug. 24 when Lance threw five interceptions at AT&T Stadium in the preseason finale against the Los Angeles Chargers. If that didn’t do it, the morning of Sept. 8 should have been the icing on the cake, when the Cowboys handed Prescott the richest contract in NFL history to be the quarterback in Dallas for four more years.
Rush and Lance are both free agents after this season. The Cowboys gain nothing by giving the starting job to Lance, aside from perhaps a better shot at a higher draft pick, given what Lance has shown on the field throughout his NFL career. When McCarthy was asked after the game if Lance would become the starter, he said the team is “not there yet.”
Even if the Cowboys reach the point of Lance being the starter, there’s no reason to believe the results would be any better than they were with Rush under center Sunday.
(Top photo of Cooper Rush: Tim Heitman / Imagn Images)
