Cooper Rush struggles in first start of season as Dallas Cowboys are dismantled by Eagles

In his first game since starting quarterback Dak Prescott was sidelined with a hamstring injury, backup QB Cooper Rush struggled in the Cowboys’ ugly loss to the Philadelphia Eagles at AT&T Stadium Sunday.

Rush completed 13 of 23 for 45 yards with a 61.7 passer rating and lost two fumbles before being benched in a 34-6 blowout loss. The Cowboys offense was unable to move the ball consistently — on the ground and in the air — from start to finish. It only had two sustained drives with Rush at quarterback, one of which ended in a turnover and the other a field goal.

Rush was benched for backup quarterback Trey Lance at the start of the fourth quarter. Rush, a Central Michigan product, had been 4-1 as the Cowboys’ starter with his lone loss coming against the Eagles during the 2022 season.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said he expected more out of the backup QB given his past success.

“Without Dak, I thought we would be much more substantially better [on offense],” Jones said. “But I’ve seen us be better with Cooper at quarterback and so I was looking forward to that. He brings some good stuff to the table and now we’re reminded that he didn’t have as good a game as last game against Philadelphia, that when he did come back and had a good streak for us.”

Lance finished the game 4 of 6 for 21 yards and an interception and neither quarterback completed a pass of longer than 10 yards.

After the game, Jones said he wasn’t interested in looking for a quarterback outside of the organization.

“Well, we’re going to have to play better than we’re playing right now. No, I don’t know that there’s answers outside the organization, but we’re flat out going to have to play better at all positions than we played tonight,” Jones said.

At the time of his benching, the Cowboys’ offense had 114 yards, led by Rico Dowdle’s 51 rushing yards, and was losing the game 31-6.

Rush was disappointed with the performance against the Eagles.

“Just didn’t play well enough. We ran it well in the first half, we just didn’t capitalize some time down there in the red zone, a couple of good long drives, defense gets a turnover, we don’t capitalize and you know, it can snowball fast when you don’t take care of the ball as well,” Rush said. “So turnovers will always kill you, and we had a chance with the defense playing well to overcome those coming out of halftime and we just didn’t.”

Jones is still holding out hope that Rush can return to his previous successes.

“I had hoped that Cooper Rush could come in here and have the kind of games that he did two years ago and had reason to think that and frankly, I hope that something of that nature will happen again,” Jones said. “This is not fun. This isn’t pretty. And I thought we’d do better, frankly.”

The Cowboys would turn the ball over on Lance’s first drive of the game after tight end Jake Ferguson fumbled after catching a pass.