Not many things have gone right this season for the Dallas Cowboys. Dallas’ defense, which was ravaged by injuries after the first three weeks of the season, has started to turn a corner a bit as they’ve gotten healthy. The defense has been playing better, more competitive football, but before yesterday’s game against the Commanders, the same could not be said about Dallas’ offense.
The Cowboys’ offense, which led the league in points scored two of the past three seasons, was a mess even before Dak Prescott suffered a season-ending hamstring injury. After Prescott’s departure, things got even worse. In their past two games, Dallas scored a total of 16 points and turned the ball over seven times. This didn’t present much optimism for the matchup against a 7-4 Commanders team. But for the first time in weeks, we saw the Cowboys’ offense have sustained success on Sunday.
Dallas finished the day with 34 points as a team, although only 20 came from the offense. While 20 offensive points isn’t a great feat, there was a night and day difference in their offensive attack this week versus last. The Cowboys had success on the ground and through the air, and finally were able to move the ball down the field consistently. If it wasn’t for some special team mishaps, Dallas’ offense could have been responsible for 26 points.
A big reason the Cowboys were able to have success on offense was the performance of quarterback Cooper Rush. The veteran quarterback had really struggled in his first two starts of the season, but he completely flipped the script on Sunday. Rush put together the best overall performance of his NFL career, completing 24 of 32 passes for 247 yards and two touchdowns. Rush’s 117.6 Passer Rating was a career-high, as was his 75% completion percentage.
Dallas Cowboys QB Cooper Rush was 24/32 for 247 yards had 2 touchdowns against the Washington Commanders.
Rush registered an average time to throw of 2.38 seconds, the quickest by a Cowboys quarterback in a game this season.
Against man coverage specifically, Rush was 8/11 for… pic.twitter.com/GCwrGTPl36
— RJ Ochoa (@rjochoa) November 24, 2024
Among all qualified quarterbacks in Week 12, Rush finished in the top 12 in EPA + CPOE (0.128 10th), EPA/Play (0.175 12th), and Success Rate (52.5% 6th). Rush wasn’t Patrick Mahomes back there, in fact he was still far from it, but he was decisive with his throws, protected the football, and made much better decisions than we’ve seen from him in weeks past.
Is Cooper Rush capable of replicating this performance moving forward? Probably not, but it was still nice to see him, for at least one week, put together a performance he and the Cowboys’ offense could be proud of.
In a lost season, Dallas’ offenses needed this in a big way. This performance will give them some confidence as they enter the final six games of the regular season.
