After three preseason contests, it appears as though Kellen Moore isn’t up to par for the Dallas Cowboys backup QB job. Here’s why Cooper Rush is.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An undrafted rookie free agent quarterback walks into a Dallas Cowboys training camp…
It worked for Tony Romo, and while the circumstances are far different in 2017, Cooper Rush seems to be another hidden gem that the Dallas Cowboys have stumbled upon. To be fair, we’ve only seen Rush in limited capacity, but man has he looked impressive.
Through three games, Rush has connected on 26 of his 38 pass attempts for a 68 percent completion rate. He’s also accumulated 283 passing yards in that span, an average of 7.4 yards per attempt. And perhaps most impressive of all, he’s tossed four touchdowns and no interceptions.
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This isn’t to say that Cooper Rush is the next Tony Romo or Troy Aikman, but he looks like a real-deal, NFL quarterback. So much so, that many fans out there in Cowboys Nation, including myself, believe he should be the No. 2 quarterback on this roster.
See, scouting quarterbacks is incredibly hard. More so than any other position on the field, NFL teams cannot figure out how to find starting-caliber quarterbacks. If they did, the likes of Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden and Johnny Manziel wouldn’t have been drafted in the first round. Yeah, we’re looking at you Cleveland.
We could sit here all day and talk about the throwing mechanics required to perform in the NFL, or the deep understanding of defensive football concepts needed to beat top-shelf NFL talent. But really, it boils down to one thing. Great quarterbacks have “it”. Bad quarterbacks don’t.
How do you measure the “it” factor? You can’t. But from what we’ve seen so far, it sure looks like Cooper Rush has “it”. When he plays, the Cowboys move the ball. Simple as that.
Next: NFL Power Rankings 2017: Preseason Week 3
So while it’s too early to crown him a franchise quarterback, he certainly seems like a better backup option than Kellen Moore.