Cowboys’ Mike McCarthy staying with Cooper Rush as starting QB vs. Texans despite Week 10 struggles vs. Eagles

FRISCO, Texas — The Dallas Cowboys offense couldn’t find the end zone and committed five turnovers in their 34-6 blowout loss, their fourth defeat in a row this season, at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 10. 

Two of those giveaways were fumbles by Dak Prescott’s fill-in at the starting quarterback position, eight-year veteran Cooper Rush. One of them came on the first play of Dallas’ second drive of the game on a routine hand-off. The other occurred via a strip-sack. That’s on top of Rush joining a notorious club, per CBS Sports Research. He completed 13 of his 23 passes for 45 yards, which made him just the third player in the last 20 years with over 20 pass attempts and under 50 passing yards in a game. He joined the washed-up, broken-down version of Hall of Famer Peyton Manning in 2015, who threw for 35 yards on 20 passes in Week 10 versus the Kansas City Chiefs, and Bengals fill-in quarterback Brandon Allen, who threw for 48 yards on 21 throws in Week 17 against the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2020 season, on the historic struggle bus.

However, Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said sticking with Rush as the team’s starting quarterback for Week 11 against the AFC South-leading Houston on “Monday Night Football” was “definitely” an easy decision. 

“Cooper Rush will be the starter this week,” McCarthy said Monday. “We’ve got a lot of faith in Cooper. Everybody believes in him. How can you not based off of how he has performed? That fumble and the recovery attempt was off to a rough start… I just felt like he never got into a rhythm.”

McCarthy referenced Rush winning five of his first six starts when filling in for an injured Prescott in 2021 and 2022, but what he didn’t mention there is that his defense was the star of those wins, allowing just 15.6 points per game in those six starts. The 2024 Cowboys are now allowing 28.8 points per game, ranking as the second-worst scoring defense in the NFL ahead of only the 3-7 Carolina Panthers (31.0 points per game allowed). 

The other option is 2021 first-overall pick quarterback Trey Lance, whom Dallas acquired from the San Francisco 49ers on the eve of their final preseason game back in 2023. Week 10 on Sunday was Lance’s first regular season work with the Cowboys, and he threw for 21 yards and an interception — on a route in which he and receiver Jalen Tolbert were clearly out of sync — while rushing for 17 yards on three carries. McCarthy inserted him into the game for a couple plays in the third quarter before pulling Lance on after two plays. Rush was subsequently strip-sacked on the ensuing third down, and Lance was then reinserted and played the entire fourth quarter. 

“We got him in there that first series to try and give us a spark, and then it got to the third down, I just felt he didn’t have reps in that particular situational work, but then we gave him some series based on where we were,” McCarthy said of Lance. “I thought he did some good things, and there are some things that he can learn from. It was good to get better.”

The Cowboys head coach didn’t think having a package of plays for Lance was an added stressor for him and his offensive staff throughout the week, but it’s clear he still views Lance as an athletic yet raw prospect. 

“It’s not,” McCarthy said when asked if adding Lance packages was difficult. “Trey actually when he got in there ran the two-minute, no-huddle offense. That wasn’t just things that we put in for him. So he ran the same packages as Dak and Cooper.”

No matter who the quarterback has been in the Cowboys’ last two home games (a 47-9 defeat vs. the Detroit Lions and the loss against the Eagles on Sunday) — Dak Prescott included — the offense has scored zero points while committing five turnovers each time out. Dallas’ 2024 squad is the second team in the past 40 seasons with zero touchdowns and five or more turnovers in consecutive home games, joining the 2006 Raiders, per CBS Sports Research. That Raiders team went 2-14 and drafted LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell first overall in the 2007 NFL Draft. When it’s historically bad, the quarterback may not matter as much when they have to overcome having the NFL’s second-worst rushing offense (83.7 rushing yards per game), a simultaneously inexperienced and aging offensive line, and a group of pass-catchers that have failed to provide any type of spark in 2024 outside of All-Pro CeeDee Lamb. 

“That was brutal, that second half was as hard a game that I’ve been apart of,” McCarthy said on Monday. “You think of the Detroit game, this game, it really comes down to the giveaways. You can’t give the ball away. … Our defense gave us great opportunities in the first half. I thought our defense took a big step in the first half and gave us opportunities. But losing that first fumble really putting them in position to score first. A 15-play drive, a six-plus minute drive. That’s the way we need to play all the time. We need to try and create more shots and things like that. These are the things we’re talking about, but yeah, five different ways, I don’t know how many more times I can say it from today to yesterday. You can’t win games like that. Big games like that.”

Dallas owner and general manager Jerry Jones, who expressed more frustration and talked about McCarthy’s job security, following his team’s fourth consecutive loss, kept it real when asked about Prescott’s value after seeing the struggles Sunday with him on the sideline in street clothes. The 2024 Cowboys simply aren’t a good team. That fault lies with him and his “all-in” offseason, McCarthy’s coaching staff and Dallas’ collections of players. No one working for “America’s Team” is without fault this season. 

“I don’t want to be sarcastic, but do you have the same arithmetic I’ve got?” Jones said postgame. “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.”  

No matter who starts at quarterback for the Cowboys the rest of the way — Rush or Lance — Jones probably won’t find his team’s output acceptable because Dallas just doesn’t have the right mix to make noise in 2024.