Cowboys have no backup for Dak, Can we move on from DiNucci?
Updated Wednesday, August 11, 2021
LLANO, Texas — Steve Spurrier, who refers to himself as “the ol’ ballcoach,” was a first round draft bust as a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. But he happily spent his first five pro seasons as backup to a near Hall of Famer, John Brodie.
In Spurrier’s view, “Backup quarterback in the NFL is the best job there is. After the game the starting quarterback is wearing bandages and ice packs, while I’m feeling great, calling up restaurants to make dinner reservations.”
It’s often said that the most popular person in a city is the backup quarterback. He gets none of the blame if the team loses. And no matter how limited he might be, thousands of the local population think he deserves to start. Everybody loves him.
Except, perhaps, the starting quarterback. Jimmy Garoppolo was the ideal backup in New England, second-round draft pick dutifully replicating Tom Brady, managing the clipboard and playing well in the two games from which the Deflategated starter was suspended.
Even though he’d established that he was the Greatest of All Time, and even though the Patriots’ two quarterbacks worked well as teammates, Brady was uncomfortable with Jimmy G looking, sometimes literally, over his shoulder. A major cause of friction with coach Bill Belichick was Brady’s end run to owner Bob Kraft to advocate trading Garoppolo, a Belichick favorite who was in fact traded, kindly enough, to San Francisco.
But now Garoppolo is sweating, as much as that’s possible in Santa Clara, where a rookie first rounder, Trey Lance, is throwing as well as the veteran and is running infinitely better and is destined to be QB1 in the next couple of months or years.
I think it’s more fun to be Trey Lance right now than it is to be Jimmy G.
Another attractive backup job is in Washington, where Taylor Heinicke as a rookie in a playoff game won hearts in a city where they’re not easily won. He held his own in a duel with the GOAT himself and is now backing up Ryan Fitzpatrick, who fluctuates wildly between magic and tragic. Heinicke is a tad short at 6-1, as is Tua Tagovailoa, who’s backed in Miami by 6-4 Jacoby Brissett, formerly backup to the backup Garoppolo in Foxborough.
Brissett played well for half a season as a starter for Indianapolis in 2019. He was 5-2, passer rating 99.3, ratio 14/3. But then he suffered a sprained knee, lost his mobility and his red-zone confidence, and in 2020 he was replaced by Philip Rivers.
The Colts could use Brissett now, with Carson Wentz injured, as he tends to be, and undistinguished Jacob Eason filling in. The Colts feared that a better backup might threaten the fragile psyche of Wentz, who fell apart in Philly with second-rounder Jalen Hurts behind him. You don’t want a backup who’s too good, or you get what coaches dread most of all, Quarterback Controversy.
Of course, the best backups are the ones you never hear about. They never play. Who was Brady’s backup last year? The less we see of Blaine Gabbert the better. But with Brady recently celebrating his 44th birthday and indicating he will play just two more years, the Bucs are taking his backup more seriously. On the second round they drafted the imposing 6-5, 235-pound Kyle Trask from Florida.
I’m writing about backups because the Hall of Fame Game, which is always a deadly bore, was worse than ever, with side-arming knuckleballer Ben DiNucci quarterbacking the Dallas Cowboys, who accumulated 3 points against Pittsburgh.
I was certain we’d seen the last of DiNucci after he was gratuitously slammed by Jerry Jones (“It was more than he could handle”) following his one pitiful start last year, when he was sacked four times and twice fumbled the ball away to the low-pressure defense of the Philadelphia Eagles.
And yet, this seventh-rounder from James Madison is still in the quarterbacks room, with Dak Prescott and now Garrett Gilbert, who’s on his third NFL team in three years. Garrett in regular-season action is barely 50% on completions: 23 of 44 for 6.4 yards per throw and 1 TD.
None of this matters much if Dallas has a quarterback like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers or Matt Ryan or Kirk Cousins or Russell Wilson who excel at, among other things, not getting hurt. But the Cowboys have Prescott, who missed most of last season with a shattered ankle, and he’s missed most of training camp with what’s described as a strained lat. That’s a common affliction of baseball pitchers, which is why the Cowboys consulted with the nearest baseball team, the Texas Rangers.
Prescott’s injury won’t keep him from missing games that count. But though his arm is above average, he can’t afford to lose 20% of its strength, as sometimes happens with lats. Instead of 90 mph darts you don’t want him tossing 80 mph meatballs. He was a fourth-round draft pick, not a first. From what experts are saying, he could be feeling this injury for the entire season.
Frankly, I’m surprised the Cowboys would not have someone more accomplished to step in for a quarterback who runs and gets tackled as often as Prescott. I guess it’s too much to expect another Andy Dalton. Or a Steve Spurrier, who admitted he should have tried harder to be No. 1. He enjoyed backup too much.
At any rate, there are better options out there than Gilbert and DiNucci or Dolce & Gabbano. Here are some third-string quarterbacks who have won games in the NFL and could be attainable by the Cowboys: Super Bowl winner Nick Foles, Kyle Allen, Trevor Siemian, Brian Hoyer, Josh Rosen, C.J. Beathard. How about Colin Kaepernick at age 33? Does anyone think he’s worse than Ben DiNucci?
