To say Michael Gallup had a rough outing in the Week 6 win over the Chargers is an understatement.
The Cowboys receiver led the team in pass targets with 10, but he caught just three of them, for 24 yards. At one point- with less than four minutes left in the game, as a matter of fact- every Dallas player Dak Prescott had thrown to had a perfect catch percentage… except for Gallup, who had all seven incompletions next to his name.
“As a receiver, our job is to get open,” Cowboys wide receivers coach Robert Prince told reporters this week at The Star. “And when the ball is thrown to us, we’ve got to make the plays.”
The sixth-year man has been with Prescott longer than any other pass-catcher on the team. And Prescott is looking Gallup’s way more than any other option save for CeeDee Lamb: more than Tony Pollard (the speedy starter out of the backfield), more than Brandin Cooks (the savvy vet brought in to be the deep threat), more than Jake Ferguson (the security blanket), and more than Jalen Tolbert, KaVontae Turpin, Luke Schoonmaker, Deuce Vaughn, Peyton Hendershot, Hunter Luepke, and Sean McKeon combined.
Of Gallup’s 32 targets, he’s caught just 18 of them.
To be fair, though, Gallup has never been a high-percentage catch guy. His career-best mark is just 56.6%, and in three of his five completed seasons, he’s posted a year-end number of under 50%.
No, the 6-foot-1-inch Gallup has instead been the guy Prescott calls on to catch the tough passes, the ones in traffic, the contested grabs.
“One thing with MG is,” Prince noted, “he is a big body. And that’s his game; he likes to play the physical game, and he’s made a living at those type of things. Hopefully, he’ll continue to do those things.”
He certainly had opportunities Monday night.
Prescott put up a potential touchdown ball for Gallup in the first quarter (the first play in the video clip below), but it was just high. Later in the second quarter (the third play in the clip), Gallup was held just enough to disrupt his concentration on a 40-yard bullet that hit him in the hands and likely would have carried him into the end zone.
It was a rough outing for Michael Gallup as he had a couple of shots at a touchdown. Maybe the first one was thrown a bit high, but other times the ball hit him right in the hands. pic.twitter.com/6xwdvCb12F
— Dan Rogers (@DannyPhantom24) October 17, 2023
“He’s got to make those plays,” Prince explained, “Even though he got tugged and the ref didn’t throw the flag, we’ve still got to make it.”
The multiple drops in Week 6 fueled online chatter that Gallup didn’t deserve the five-year $62.5 million extension he signed last March and that the club should move on.
Prince acknowledges that the 27-year-old has had a long and difficult road back from the ACL tear he suffered in January 2022. Gallup himself admitted that it took over 16 months for him to feel like his old self and trust his body again.
“Obviously, he was coming back from his knee last year and thinking he’s going to have a better year this year. And unfortunately, sometimes things didn’t work out,” explained Prince. “But we put MG out on the island out there when we go on a three-by-one set, and he’s going to get press coverage, and we’re asking him to win those battles.”
While Monday’s bumpy performance had fans (with apparently very short-term or selective memory issues) calling for his job, Gallup has actually come up big as recently as Week 4.
He reeled in five out of six targets (83.3%) for 60 yards versus New England, six out of seven (85.7%) for 92 yards the week prior in Arizona. In those two games, played less than a month ago, Prescott averaged a 113.2 passer rating when going to Gallup.
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Overall, his stats (regular season only) do show that Gallup hasn’t quite returned to his pre-injury level of play. But he’s not that far off, either. Certainly not enough to cut bait.
| Gms | Catch % | Yds/Gm | Yds/Rec | |
| Pre-ACL tear | 55 | 55.5% | 52.8 | 15.04 |
| Post-ACL tear | 20 | 53.8% | 31.4 | 11.02 |
Prince is preaching patience with Gallup. And he’s got a vocal disciple in the WR room in Cooks, who’s already shown a willingness to mentor the team’s younger receivers; after Cooks worked with Lamb to get through his Week 5 frustrations (and his own touchdown drought), No. 88 caught every single ball that came to him Monday night at SoFi.
Before the game was even over, Cooks had already taken his message to Gallup.
What a cool moment from Brandin Cooks, picking Michael Gallup up after the drop. pic.twitter.com/wZZSnxmXH0
— Mauricio Rodríguez (@MauNFL) October 19, 2023
Now, with promising newcomers Turpin, Tolbert, and Jalen Brooks waiting in the wings to sneak a few targets away here and there, the team will have to wait until Week 8 to see if the lesson has sunk in and Gallup starts to return to form.
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