Dallas has won four of five games, but will not be in the postseason

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FRISCO, Texas — Despite the Cowboys’ “Sunday Night Football” upset win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8-7), they were eliminated prior to kickoff with the Washington Commanders winning their 10th game of the season.

One would think that would mean Dallas would look to get younger players more reps in the final two games, including quarterback Trey Lance, the third overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers. However, that won’t be the case. Even though head coach Mike McCarthy’s stock went up with the victory Sunday night, he is still locked in on trying to scrape two more wins out of an injury-plagued 2024 season, one in which face of the franchise Dak Prescott has been out since suffering a season-ending hamstring tear in Week 9 at the Atlanta Falcons.

The 61-year-old head coach is in the last year of his current contract with the Cowboys, so he’ll continue to start eight-year veteran Cooper Rush with the team winning four of its last five with him under center and the defense rolling. Rush has thrown for nine touchdowns and just one interception while averaging 226.2 passing yards per game and 6.9 yards per pass attempt with a 64.4% completion percentage in that stretch. That’s good for a 100.5 passer rating since Week 12, 14th in the league in that span.

“The mindset is to win. We’re going to Philadelphia to win the game,” McCarthy said Monday. We’re reeling as if it’s a division game, it’s an arrival game, all those things. It’s exciting to go up there. The crowd is going to welcome us with open arms like they always do. So we’re fired up about that, too. We’re going there to win. That’s something that I think is clear to everybody. It’s Christmas week, so the work week will look a little different this week. But we’ll get all the work in just just like we would any other week. We’re playing this game to win.”

However, would it be beneficial to see what you have in the 24-year-old quarterback before he becomes an unrestricted free agent in March, especially since the Cowboys traded away a fourth-round pick to the 49ers to acquire him? Both he and Rush will be unrestricted in March, and with McCarthy aiming to still be the Cowboys head coach by the time free agency rolls around, he is sticking with the steady veteran over the more athletic, raw option.

“The evaluation process goes on all the time. It would benefit — I think it’s a very fair question playing in games, but we feel really good about what we do every day, how we train, those things go into it,” McCarthy said. “But right now, we’re game planning. I’m going right to third down as soon as I get done from here. We’re going to line it up and try to build off the win last night.”