The Dallas Cowboys won the two games Tony Romo started this season, beating the NFC East rival New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles. Since Romo sustained a broken collarbone and the team was turned over to Brandon Weeden and more recently Matt Cassel, they have lost all five games.
Surprise! Matt Cassel isn’t the answer to the Cowboys’ problems
The Cowboys are bad without Tony Romo, but they aren’t better off with Matt Cassel instead of Brandon Weeden under center.
Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
That includes a loss to the Giants, and they could face a similar fate in their rematch against the Eagles in Week 9. This is a division where Washington, a team starting Kirk Cousins at quarterback and unanimously picked to be one of the worst teams in the league this year, is in second place with a 3-4 record. The Giants lead the division at 4-4.
A five-game losing streak is bad enough, but even more has gone wrong for the Cowboys since Romo went down with his injury.
One thing after another
No. 1 wide receiver Dez Bryant only returned to the field this past Sunday after missing five games due to a fractured foot. He had five receptions for 48 yards against the Giants in the first game of the season before getting injured. In Bryant's return against the Seattle Seahawks, Cassel was only able to find him twice for 12 yards.
While the passing game has struggled to get going, the running game also hasn't been very effective. Darren McFadden leads the way with just 345 yards and two touchdowns. Joseph Randle, who entered the season as the starter and has shown some flashes, is dealing with both an oblique injury and a potential suspension stemming from an offseason arrest. He's totaled 315 yards and four touchdowns in six games.
Defensively, the Cowboys have been more than serviceable, ranking eighth in the league in total defense and in the middle of the pack when it comes to points allowed. They’re not shutting out opponents, but they’re playing about as well as expected, and probably well enough to have the Cowboys on the winning end of games if the offense was playing up to expectations. Of their five losses, three have been one-score games.
You can’t blame a 2-5 start all on the quarterback change, but it’s obvious at this point that the Cowboys would be in a much better position -- especially given the weakness of their division -- if Romo hadn’t been hurt. That was clear when Weeden first took over for Romo and struggled, and it’s even clearer now that Cassel has two starts under his belt.
Cassel’s two abysmal starts
In Cassel’s first start against the Giants, he completed 17 of 27 passes for 227 yards and a touchdown, with three costly interceptions. Despite the three picks, the Cowboys barely lost that game thanks to a tough defense. Against the Seahawks on Sunday, Cassel was given a second chance as the starter. While he eliminated the interceptions, he threw for a measly 97 yards and was unable to find the end zone.
The Seahawks won, 13-12, and now we have a comparable sample size for the three quarterbacks.
| Player | Completions | Yards | YPA | TD/INT | QBR |
| Tony Romo | 54/72 (75.0 percent) | 551 | 7.7 | 3/2 | 98.8 |
| Brandon Weeden | 71/98 (72.4 percent) | 738 | 7.5 | 2/2 | 92.1 |
| Matt Cassel | 30/52 (57.7 percent) | 324 | 6.2 | 1/3 | 58.5 |
Romo was the best, with Weeden not too far behind (and with a slightly larger sample size). On Sunday, Cassel was completely unable to move the ball for the Cowboys, and his attempt to bring Dallas back with a late game-winning drive made for one of the worst offensive possessions we've seen this year.
Despite his awful performance, Cassel will remain the starter in Week 9 against the Eagles.
The trade with the Bills has been a flop
So why is Cassel starting over Weeden in the first place? Why did the Cowboys make a move to bring in Cassel, rush to get him to understand the playbook and throw him in there so quickly? They sent a 2017 fifth-round pick to the Buffalo Bills in exchange for Cassel and a seventh-round pick, but Cassel’s career stats aren’t anything special. In 11 years in the league, he has a completion percentage of 58.9 and has thrown 97 touchdowns and 73 interceptions.
Weeden's career completion percentage is a bit lower than Cassel's despite a smaller sample size, and he has thrown more interceptions than touchdowns in his career. Still, Cassel is far removed from his best season in 2010 with the Kansas City Chiefs and he was most recently on the losing end of a quarterback battle with EJ Manuel and Tyrod Taylor.
This isn’t a cry for Weeden to get the start until Romo comes back -- which is expected in Week 11 as he remains on target in his recovery -- it’s just a question of why this trade was ever made in the first place. And with Kellen Moore, the Cowboys already have a backup to Weeden on the roster.
With the trade deadline fast approaching, there is still plenty of room for another team to make an even worse deal. But for now, the Cowboys trading for Cassel is high on the head-scratching list.
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