As the Cowboys offense took the field for the final time Sunday afternoon, the situation was set up like the last scene of a made-for-Hollywood movie. Tied score, 57 seconds left, one timeout remaining. It was up to a backup quarterback to guide the team into field goal range for even a chance to pull off the dramatic upset.
The moment called for a rousing, goose-bump-inducing speech, the kind delivered by the square-jawed leading man as the music swells, a climactic call to action full of rich imagery and soul-stirring emotion, a masterpiece of motivation written by a room full of award-winning scriptwriters.
But as the huddle formed around Cooper Rush, he had nothing memorable to say at all.
“I don’t remember anything specifically,” an understated Rush recalled afterward as he spoke to reporters. “It was probably, ‘Let’s go, here we go, this is why we do it, this is our time.’ It’s a fun group, good group with tons of leaders all over the place. Not everyone needs to get hyped up. They know their job, they know what to do, and you just go play ball.”
And that they did. Rush moved the unit 33 yards in six plays, close enough to give kicker Brett Maher a chance from 50 yards. The field goal try connected, and Dallas came away with an improbable 20-17 win.
But it all seemed very business-as-usual for Rush. Despite making just his second pro start, the undrafted 28-year-old Central Michigan product was as calm and collected in crunch time as he normally is taking practice tosses alongside Dak Prescott.
“Those are the perfect adjectives to describe Coop; he’s calm and he’s collected,” running back Ezekiel Elliott said Sunday evening. “He may seem like he’s a little quiet at times, but he knows his stuff and he was ready for this moment.”
Head coach Mike McCarthy agreed, having seen Rush also lead Dallas to a comeback win in his first start last season.
“That’s Cooper Rush; we see that every day. He’s the same, he is so steady [in his] personality type, he never blinks,” McCarthy gushed in his postgame press conference.
Rush was an efficient 19-of-31 on the day, amassing 235 passing yards and one touchdown through the air on his way to a 95.5 passer rating. Despite standing on the sideline for most of the second half while the Bengals offense played keep-away, Rush was his most accurate when it mattered most. He completed all three of his pass attempts on that final drive (even though it took Noah Brown snaring a tipped ball) to keep things moving.
“We have the utmost confidence in him and the ability to lead us in the two-minute drive in the back-end of the game,” CeeDee Lamb said. “You can’t ask for much [more than that].”
And thankfully, no one asked Rush for a fiery exhortation in the huddle. In fact, the former seventh-round draft pick said that as he took the field for what turned out to be the game-winning drive, he wasn’t even thinking much about his own responsibilities. He admitted he was more occupied by KaVontae Turpin’s 14-yard punt return that set the offense up at the 35.
“I was thinking, ‘Great job by Turp getting us not backed up, getting us out there a little bit.’ Brett has a big leg, and his range is pretty out there. We knew we just had to get a few first downs.”
Just a few first downs, in the waning seconds of a brawl with the previous season’s AFC champions, after every last bit of momentum had been sucked out of the stadium over the previous 29 minutes, and with an entire fanbase who all but expected the backup to fall flat on his face.
And Cooper Rush delivered. Without some big rah-rah pep talk.
“He never changes; he stays the same with communication on the bench,” McCarthy said. “It’s actually exciting to see him get excited after we win the game. I get a charge out of it because he is so consistent.”
In fact, as long as the even-keeled Rush can keep delivering and his Cowboys teammates keep simply doing their jobs on the field, there doesn’t need to be any fanfare at all.
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