January 15, 2025
LINK TO ARTICLE: https://overthelinesports.ca/football/f/the-cooper-rush-bonus-controversy
The Dallas Cowboys have had a rough year riddled with injuries, roster challenges, and management issues. Sunday’s last-minute 23-19 loss to the Washington Commanders seemed like a fitting way to end the Cowboys’ 7-10 regular season, however, the drama continues.
With Quarterback Dak Prescott suffering a season-ending hamstring injury in Week 9, the Cowboys had opted to start Cooper Rush for eight games in his place.
Rush helped keep the Cowboys afloat after Prescott went down, going 4-4 in his starts. He completed 60.7% of his passes for 1,844 yards and 12 touchdowns with just five interceptions, keeping the Cowboys from a season collapse down the stretch.
According to Jonathan Jones, for the 2024-25 season, Rush was incentivized to play 55% of the team’s snaps this season for a $500,000 bonus.
Prior to Sunday, Rush had played 52.5% of snaps, meaning he needed to play most or all of the game to reach the incentive, he otherwise would only earn $250,000 for reaching the 45% mark.
However, Rush’s incentive hopes were deserted as the Cowboys chose to bench him in favor of third-string quarterback Trey Lance, who had been traded from the San Francisco 49ers to the Cowboys in 2023. Lance did not get any playing time throughout the 2023-24 season and had only thrown seven passes at the end of two blowout games this season.
The Cowboys have been eliminated from playoff contention since Week 16.
With no playoffs to prepare for and no real reason to bench their starting QB, speculation that Dallas benched Rush in order to avoid paying out the cash quickly spread.
When asked whether Rush’s possible payday contributed to the team, Cowboys owner and GM Jerry Jones said that he “didn’t even know about the incentive until [he] read about it,” and that the prospect of paying Rush “contributed nothing at all to the choice.”
“Those incentives are in there for the team. We put them in there so if someone is, in his case, a backup quarterback who has to play, they’ve got financial incentives,”Jones said Sunday. “But they’re usually put in there because of the people representing them. And they should be. He did really earn some pretty serious incentives this year.”
Although it is a possibility he was unaware of the payout and the team wanted to give Lance a chance to start in the last game of the season, it is expected that as a GM, Jones should know about the incentives built into players’ contracts.
A fitting end to a disastrous season, the Cowboys will have to put this moment behind them and look to 2025.
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