Dallas Cowboys (4-1)
When the 2020 Cowboys
lost Prescott for the season in Week 5, they were forced to turn to quarterbacks
Andy Dalton,
Ben DiNucci and
Garrett Gilbert for the remainder of the year. They went 4-7. This season, with Prescott
sidelined by a thumb injury since Week 1, they instead turned to 28-year-old
Cooper Rush, whose only career start came last season. With
Sunday's win over the Rams, Rush has now won each of his first four starts, matching what those backups did in 2020 over 11 games.
Even Rush admits the Cowboys are winning games with their defense, and Sunday was no exception. On a day in which he threw for just 102 yards and four first downs on 19 dropbacks, the defense produced yet another stifling display. Edge rusher
DeMarcus Lawrence took a
Matthew Stafford strip sack to the house for a first-quarter touchdown, one of three takeaways on the day. Dallas sacked the quarterback five times and knocked him down on 11 occasions, with hybrid defender
Micah Parsons leading the way.
The biggest difference between the 2020 Cowboys and the 2022 edition is on the defensive side of the ball. Mike McCarthy's first choice as a
defensive coordinator hire was Mike Nolan, and the former 49ers coach simply wasn't able to coax a competent defense out of his players. Those Cowboys were sloppy, to put it mildly. I'm not sure I can think of an NFL defense that gave up more big plays because of gap integrity issues than Dallas in 2020.
Those Cowboys gave up a league-high five plays of 60 yards or more. These Cowboys had not given up one such play all season before Sunday, when
Cooper Kupp took a pass and went 75 yards to the house. Coordinator Dan Quinn has built an excellent defense since
taking over for Nolan, and just as the Bills were lucky Daboll returned for one final season with the team in 2021, the Cowboys have to be thrilled that
Quinn is back after attracting head-coaching attention in January.
Most of those Cowboys aren't around anymore. Nine of the 15 defenders who played at least 50% of the defensive snaps in 2020 aren't on the roster. Dallas undoubtedly regrets losing cornerback
Chidobe Awuzie, who has morphed into a superstar with Cincinnati, but they're better in most places.
Trevon Diggs, one of the few players who started on both teams, has grown from an inconsistent rookie into one of the league's most exciting corners.
The Cowboys added Parsons in Round 1 a year ago, and his incredible success might be a reminder that adding transcendent players, even if they're not at essential positions, can transform a defense. Parsons was drafted as an off-ball linebacker with the possibility of contributing to packages as an edge rusher, but I don't think anybody expected him to be the sort of difference-maker we've seen so far. He has 19 sacks over the past two seasons, including six this season, which is tied for most in the league.
The Cowboys
traded down within the division with the Eagles and netted an extra third-rounder in the process, which is a reminder that teams can make that most forbidden of moves and still win comfortably. The Eagles are undoubtedly happy with wide receiver
DeVonta Smith at No. 10, and
Chauncey Golston hasn't done much as Dallas' additional third-round pick, but Parsons might be one of the league's best two or three defensive players. On Sunday, we saw him swarm Los Angeles for two sacks and create opportunities for others when the Rams slid their protection toward Parsons.
In 2020, the Cowboys were the league's seventh-worst defense by expected points added (EPA) per play. Through five games in 2022, they're the league's fifth-
best defense by EPA per snap. That difference dramatically reduces the burden on Rush, who hasn't needed to win games as the focal point of the offense.
Cowboys secure victory with back-to-back defensive stops
Malik Hooker hauls in the interception and Sam Williams recovers the strip sack by Micah Parsons to secure the victory for the Cowboys.
Coincidentally, Sunday was Rush's worst game of the season. Across his first three starts, he hadn't turned the ball over and had taken just two sacks, eliminating most negative plays from Dallas' attack. The offense wasn't exactly exciting, but when it has a great defense and doesn't make any mistakes on offense, it's going to be in good position to win games.
Owing to the presence of star defensive tackle
Aaron Donald, Sunday was messier. Rush was sacked three times and fumbled twice, although the Cowboys were lucky to fall on both. Dallas was 23rd in EPA per play on offense, meaning the only team with a less effective offense to win in Week 5 was
the Colts, who were just about as bad on offense as the opposing Broncos were Thursday night.
This was a relatively quiet game for wide receiver
CeeDee Lamb, but he has become the focal point of the Dallas offense since Prescott went down injured. Since the start of Week 2, Lamb has been targeted on 39.4% of his routes. The only player who has been targeted more often over that stretch has been Falcons wide receiver
Drake London, who is playing on a Falcons team utterly devoid of playmakers.
As was the case with Parsons, the Lamb selection reminds us that taking the best player available is important, because what seems like a glut of talent might not look that way in a couple of years. The Cowboys
drafted Lamb with No. 17 pick of the 2020 draft after he unexpectedly fell out of the top half of the first round. At the time, he seemed like a luxury pick for a team with
Amari Cooper and
Michael Gallup at wideout,
Blake Jarwin at tight end and
Ezekiel Elliott at running back.
Two years later, Lamb is the only one of those five improving. Cooper is
with the Browns, while Gallup is playing about 30 snaps per game as he recovers from a
torn left ACL. Jarwin might never play again after suffering a hip injury, while replacement
Dalton Schultz is struggling with a knee issue. Elliott has averaged minus -0.4 RYOE per carry and generated four first downs below expectation this season, but backup
Tony Pollard is at 2.3 RYOE per carry while generating three first downs above expectation.
To be fair, even given the relatively mild load Rush has been forced to carry, he has exceeded expectations. His 64.9
QBR ranks eighth in the league, ahead of Hurts,
Tom Brady and
Joe Burrow. Rush actually has been let down a by a higher-than-expected drop rate (5.1%), and his average throw has traveled 8.1 yards in the air, which ranks 10th since Week 2. He has locked onto Lamb, but that's not a bad thing, and it's something Prescott might want to try to emulate when he returns to the lineup, either Sunday or in Week 7.
I'm not going to waste anyone's time with the arguments that the Cowboys could, should or will stick with Rush as their starter. Prescott's ceiling is much higher. Rush hasn't been in a situation in which he has had to throw them back into the game during this stretch, and just by sheer randomness, there's no way he could go the rest of the season without losing a fumble or throwing an interception. Plenty of middling quarterbacks can have stretches like this. Take 2013, when
Josh McCown posted a 13-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio
across five starts for the Bears in the middle of a career in which he otherwise posted a 85-to-81 ratio.
It's clear the Cowboys are in a much better position to sustain a backup quarterback now than they were in 2020. They're still a top-heavy team, but two years ago, they were both top-heavy and weighted strongly toward the offensive side of the ball. Now, after nailing the Diggs and Parsons draft picks, they're more evenly balanced. We'll see what happens in their trip to Philadelphia next weekend, but Cowboys fans facing down an 0-1 start and weeks with Rush at quarterback have to be thrilled about where they are now.
