ARLINGTON, Texas — A little more than two months ago, everything seemed to be right.
Dak Prescott stood in a small interview room inside Huntington Bank Field after the Dallas Cowboys opened the season with a win against the Cleveland Browns on Sept. 8. Hours earlier, the quarterback agreed to a contract that would make him the highest-paid player in NFL history: four years, $240 million, $231 million guaranteed.
All seemed possible.
Until it wasn’t.
By this Wednesday, Prescott could undergo season-ending surgery to repair a partial avulsion of his right hamstring, but the Cowboys’ season goes on. Prescott will fly to New York Monday morning to meet with a specialist. If there is an agreement that surgery is the best route, then Prescott will need three months to recover.
The first game without Prescott ended Sunday in a 34-6 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Cooper Rush and Trey Lance combined to pass for 66 yards. The Cowboys turned the ball over five times.
“I don’t want to be sarcastic, but have you got the same arithmetic I’ve got? We’ve won three games with Dak,” owner and general manager Jerry Jones said after the game. “So I’m just saying we weren’t playing well with Dak. At all. So there’s a lot to work on here, and we are all aware of that, and [it’s] very concerning.”
It was the Cowboys’ fourth straight home loss. In 2015, they lost five straight home games on their way to a 4-12 finish as quarterback Tony Romo twice suffered a broken collarbone.
That season, the Cowboys tried to patch together their quarterback room, first with Brandon Weeden, then with a trade for Matt Cassel from the Buffalo Bills. In the end, Kellen Moore started the final two games of the season.
This season, the Cowboys have Rush, now 5-2 as Prescott’s replacement during his Cowboys tenure, with both of those losses coming against the Eagles. In 2022, he lost to Philadelphia at Lincoln Financial Field in what was his final start before Prescott’s return from a broken right thumb.
On Sunday, Rush completed 13 of 23 passes for 46 yards. He was sacked once and lost a first-quarter fumble.
Like Prescott last offseason, Rush is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent following this season. He has gone from undrafted free agent making the roster in 2017 to being released by the team in 2020 to legitimate backup from 2021 to 2024.
He turns 31 in two weeks and is what he is at this point of his career: a backup.
Lance, the No. 3 overall pick in 2021 by the San Francisco 49ers, is also set to be an unrestricted free agent when the season ends. Acquired for a fourth-round pick that, in part, prevented the Cowboys from selecting a running back in last spring’s draft, Lance remains a mystery. In the second half against Philadelphia, he completed four of six passes for 21 yards and was intercepted once.
He is 24, younger than 2024 first-round picks Bo Nix (Broncos) and Michael Penix Jr. (Falcons). If the Cowboys’ season continues to dissolve, why not see if Lance could be Prescott’s backup in 2025 or potentially fetch a compensatory pick in 2026 if he performs well? Jones wasn’t ready to go there Sunday.
“We’re going to have to play better than we’re playing right now,” Jones said. “No, I don’t know that there’s answers outside the organization [at quarterback]. But we’re flat going to have to play better at all positions than we played tonight.”
Lance had an opportunity in the preseason, and while he displayed talent at times, most remember the five interceptions he threw in the preseason finale against the Los Angeles Chargers.
“I feel like I’m in a real good spot right now,” Lance said last week about understanding the offense. “Having gone through the whole offseason program, training camp and everything, having a full year and some under my belt, being around these guys, it helps a ton.”
Coach Mike McCarthy might find himself in the most difficult position of anyone in the organization.
Like the backup quarterbacks, McCarthy does not have a contract beyond this season. His job security has been talked about since the Cowboys’ wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers in January.
No longer is the Cowboys’ season going to be about a prolonged playoff appearance, barring something close to a miracle. For McCarthy, it will be about how he keeps a team together when there is nothing to play for beyond pride and individual statistics.
“I don’t believe we’ll make a coaching change during the season,” Jones said Sunday.
When injuries — especially to the starting quarterback — take over a season, the fight of a team might mean more to Jones than wins. Key word: might. Especially since McCarthy was hired to do what Jason Garrett could not: advance deep in the postseason.
Yet in two of McCarthy’s five seasons, Prescott did not make it past the halfway point of a season. In the fifth game of the 2020 season, he suffered a dislocated and compound fractured right ankle.
The Cowboys started three different quarterbacks after that injury — Andy Dalton, Ben DiNucci, Garrett Gilbert — and finished 6-10.
This season, Prescott suffered his injury in the eighth game of a 17-game season. Even before the injury, he was not having his best season, throwing 11 touchdowns and eight interceptions, one off his 2023 interception total when he started every game.
And now the Cowboys are 3-6.
Eight games remain in what is looking more and more like a lost season, just like 2015.
The final autopsy of the 2024 season will come in early January.
Until then, the Cowboys play on without Prescott.