ARLINGTON, Texas — Dallas Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy waxed poetic about backup-turned-starter Cooper Rush with him taking over in place of an injured Dak Prescott.
In the lead up to their Week 10 home game against the Philadelphia Eagles, a 34-6 defeat, McCarthy compared Rush to 2002 NFL MVP Rich Gannon. Rush made history on Sunday, and joined another NFL MVP quarterback, Peyton Manning, but in disastrous fashion. He completed 13 of his 23 passes for 45 yards and lost two fumbles, one on a bobbled snap and another on a strip-sack. According to CBS Sports Research, Rush’s performance on Sunday made him only the third player in the last 20 years with over 20 pass attempts and under 50 passing yards in a game.
Rush joined the washed-up, broken-down version of Manning in 2015, who threw for 35 yards on 20 passes in Week 10 against the Kansas City Chiefs, and Bengals fill-in quarterback Brandon Allen, who threw for 48 yards on 21 attempts in Week 17 against the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2020 season, in this notorious club.
“Just didn’t play well enough,” Rush said postgame on Sunday. … “We just didn’t capitalize some times down in the red zone. [We had 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.”
McCarthy also went out of his way during the week to call Sunday “Cooper’s opportunity” when asked about finding ways to get 2021 third overall pick quarterback Trey Lance into the game. In the end, he knew Rush didn’t have it and put Lance in for good at the beginning of the fourth quarter. It’s unclear whom the Cowboys will start in Prescott’s absence going forward.
“We’re not there yet. I mean, we had a package for him,” McCarthy said postgame on Sunday when asked about Lance’s potential to start. We wanted to get him into the flow of the game was the thought process coming in here. Then to get him in when we did, then I took him out on [one] the third down. I just believe in reps. I mean that third down segment there, not that he couldn’t run the plays. I just didn’t want to put him in there, something that he hadn’t had a lot of reps in. I put Cooper back in for that play, for third down, we had the turnover there. Something [starting Lance] I’ll obviously discuss tomorrow.”
