What a Dak Prescott Week 5 return would mean for Cowboys

By Ralph Vacchiano
FOX Sports NFC East Writer

Cooper Rush has done exactly what he needed to do over the past two weeks. He has kept the Dallas Cowboys afloat and alive.

And now it seems that Dak Prescott is just about ready to take back the reins.

The injured Cowboys quarterback isn’t quite back yet, but he said in an interview Monday night with USA Today that he expects to miss only one more game. Asked if he’d be ready for this Sunday’s game against the Washington Commanders, Prescott said, “Nah, probably not.”

“But Week 5 against the Rams?” he added. “That’s the one I’m looking at.”

That is exactly what the Cowboys hoped in the aftermath of the thumb injury Prescott suffered on Opening Day, when they opted not to put him on injured reserve. That would’ve kept him out a minimum of four games. So far, he has missed only two — both of them Cowboys wins.

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And now Prescott is poised to return at the perfect time, right before a huge NFC showdown in Los Angeles on Oct. 9, which is followed a week later by the NFC East’s early Game of the Year between the Cowboys and Eagles in Philadelphia. The Cowboys need their two-time Pro Bowl quarterback at the helm as they run that gauntlet.

As good as Rush has been, it’s hard to imagine he would be able to lead them through that stretch.

Still, Rush has done his job so far. He has played well, and the Cowboys’ offense — which struggled in the Week 1 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — seems to be slowly kicking into gear. They had 391 yards in their 23-16 win over the Giants on Monday, and Rush went 21-of-31 for 215 yards and a touchdown. His numbers would’ve been even better if it weren’t for a couple of drops by his No. 1 receiver, CeeDee Lamb, who nonetheless caught eight passes for 87 yards and the game-winning, fourth-quarter touchdown.

Rush is now 3-0 as a starter in his career. And Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was raving about him in Jones’ appearance on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas on Tuesday morning.

“Let me say this: He’s certainly playing as well as anybody could have expected,” he said. “He has got the makeup for a top quarterback.”

Jones has been in Rush’s corner from the beginning, even playfully fantasizing last week about the Cowboys developing a quarterback controversy before Prescott returns. He clearly has faith in the six-year veteran who has been cut and re-signed a handful of times and even began this season on the Dallas practice squad.

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But Rush has been good, not great, as a starter. And he’s clearly no Prescott. Last year, Prescott threw for 4,449 yards and 37 touchdowns while running the No. 1 offense in the NFL. He was one of the best quarterbacks in the entire league.

If the Cowboys are going to have any hope of keeping pace with the high-flying Eagles, they really need Prescott at the helm.

What Rush has done, mostly, is to buy Prescott time. By beating the Bengals and Giants — while completing 40 of 62 passes for 450 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions — he has avoided disaster, which has allowed the Cowboys to resist the urge to rush Prescott back. If they were 0-3 now instead of 2-1, they might have been begging him to come back to face the Commanders on Sunday, ready or not.

Now, if he’s not ready, they won’t even have to feel the urgency to bring him back for that Week 5 game against the Rams. The Cowboys-Eagles matchup in Week 6 is the one that really matters.

Of course, Prescott clearly doesn’t want to wait that long. He seems to think his thumb is just about ready.

“Some people are OK with [sitting out], but I’m not built that way,” he said. “It’s [bleeping] killing me not being out there with my guys. It’s so hard.

“But I also know I got to be patient.”

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Thanks to Rush, he can be. He can make sure his injured thumb is 100 percent, because there’s no need to run to the Cowboys’ rescue. All the parts of the Dallas offense that went so wrong on Opening Day seem to be coming together. Even Jones understood that was a big reason for Rush’s impressive play.

“I’m real impressed with his protection,” Jones said. “I’m very impressed with the running game that he’s working behind. All of those things, he would be the first to tell you, make his good play attainable.”

Now imagine that protection and that running game — which ripped through the Giants for 176 yards — with a top-tier quarterback running the show. Even without receiver Amari Cooper, who was traded to Cleveland during the offseason, the Cowboys have enough to be one of the most dangerous offenses in the league.

And they’re probably the only NFC East team capable of making a real run at the Eagles.

They know they can’t do that with Rush at quarterback, though. They need Prescott to be a real contender. And his time is coming soon. Rush did his job. He avoided disaster in Prescott’s absence.

But the Cowboys are Dak Prescott’s team. He is the engine of their offense.

And his time to remind everyone of that is apparently coming very soon.

Ralph Vacchiano is the NFC East reporter for FOX Sports, covering the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys. He spent 22 years covering the Giants, Jets and NFL at large for SNY and the New York Daily News. He can be found on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.