Dallas City News

It was announced on Monday afternoon that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is going to miss “multiple weeks” with a hamstring injury. That is obviously horrible news.

Prescott did not finish the team’s game against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, but the team lost, and in doing so, fell to 3-5 on the season. Even in a world where Dak was not at all injured, the idea of them climbing out of this hole felt farfetched. In a world without him matters are certainly more difficult.

In the initial reporting of the Dak news it was noted by various NFL insiders that Cooper Rush is the team’s primary backup quarterback. This is literally true, and in a world where the team was thought to have a potential to be competitive, like at the beginning of the 2022 season when Prescott injured the thumb on his throwing hand, it would make sense to trust Rush given that he is the longer-tenured quarterback and one who has done it before.

But we are in different waters relative to that time. The boat that we once took out to sea does not make as much sense in these particular waves and storms.

It is time for Trey Lance.

Trey Lance should start at quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, not Cooper Rush

Let’s get the important details out of the way to start. Dak Prescott signed an extension with the Cowboys on the literal day that the season began for the team, one that made him the highest-paid player in NFL history. He is not going anywhere as the team’s long-term starter. Understood? Great.

Recognizing reality we also need to note that both Cooper Rush and Trey Lance are in the final years of their respective contracts with the team. Understood once more? Awesome.

When the Cowboys turned to Rush after the first game of the 2022 season they did so with high expectations for the season at hand still very much alive and well, even with the starting quarterback injured. What’s more is that the Cowboys had arguably the best defense in the NFL to rely on for whoever was going to play quarterback for them at that point in time which made asking Rush to simply keep the ship afloat a more accomplishable task.

Circumstances now are hardly what they were then. The Cowboys are 3-5 and looking up at the Washington Commanders (7-2) and Philadelphia Eagles (6-2) in their division. They have already been trounced by top-tier teams in the NFC outside of the division in the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers. Consider that the New Orleans Saints just fired their head coach who went on a seven-game losing streak after overseeing an effort where his team dismantled these Cowboys.

You would be hard-pressed to find an instance in NFL history of a club actually admitting that their season is lost and tanking or whatever else you want to call it; however, anyone with even the slightest semblance of reality here can recognize that this season is lost for the Cowboys and was long before Prescott’s hamstring injury. With this being the case, the right move is not to try and recreate the 2022 magic with Cooper Rush, but the move at hand should be for the Cowboys to start Trey Lance from this point moving forward.

Obviously Lance is in a contract year for the Cowboys and Prescott is under a long-term deal so the thought here is not that Lance could serve as the future signal-caller of the team. But what is there to lose at this point? Actually, what was the point of trading for Lance to begin with if not to turn to him under these specific circumstances?

In the most perfect of perfect worlds, Lance offers the Cowboys something in this time that they feel is a workable asset for the future. What is that potential asset and what could be done with it? Those are certainly difficult and awkward questions, but their existence should not hinder the team from pursuing this path. With the utmost respect for Cooper Rush here, there is nothing to be gained, no knowledge to be found, by starting him this deep down the rabbit hole.

The rest of this season needs to be about doing things a bit unconventionally and trying to figure out what can be taken into the great beyond when this team has a chance of competing again.

Give us Trey Lance.