Eagles Prove Why Cowboys Fans Should Be So Grateful for Cooper Rush

Backup quarterbacks are a lot like referees. When things are going well you don't even think about them. It's only when something goes wrong that they start to get a lot of attention.

And Cooper Rush has earned that "good referee" level of attention for most of his career in Dallas. It's wild to think that he's already heading into his sixth NFL season — we hear so little about him that it feels like his career is much younger than that.

This offseason the Eagles are giving us a prime example of the reverse scenario too. They brought in Marcus Mariota as a high-profile backup to Jalen Hurts, and the experiment has been a disaster so far.

There's been almost no buzz around Mariota from training camp practices, and he seems to be struggling to throw the ball in his new offense. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He's a guy who is most dangerous with his legs, and QBs aren't allowed to run much in practice, so the live-game scenarios in the preseason would be better suited to show what he can do.

Well he averaged just 5.3 yards per pass attempt in his preseason debut against the Ravens, then completely chunked it against the Browns on Thursday. Mariota went just 9/17 for 86 yards (5.1 per attempt) with an interception, getting sacked three times and only notching 5 yards on his lone carry. That's a straight up bad performance.

So now the Eagles are in a brutal spot. If you bring in someone else as the QB2 now they'll be getting a very short training camp to learn the offense and build chemistry with the team. Not to mention the free agent market is mostly dried up, and that moving on from Mariota would cost $5 million in dead cap space.

The options behind him on the depth chart aren't great either. Ian Book is probably getting cut, and Tanner McKee is a sixth-round rookie.

If Jalen Hurts gets injured, the Eagles are totally screwed.

Of course most teams won't win a Super Bowl with their backup all year, but a QB2 should at least be able to take over for a short stretch without totally tanking the season. Rush has a career 5-1 record as a starter, proving he's absolutely capable of that.

Obviously, Cowboys fans are going to hope that we get to go another season without so much as thinking about Rush on gameday.

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