Baker Mayfield to Cowboys as Dak Prescott Backup? 5 Questions

Dak Prescott's future No. 2? How about former No. 1 pick Baker Mayfield as a potential backup quarterback candidate for Dallas?

FRISCO - Maybe we are getting way ahead of ourselves. But it involves the Dallas Cowboys and the quarterback position ... and isn't that conversation always "in season''?

Speculation is bubbling up as to what the team will do at quarterback behind team leader Dak Prescott. And as capable No. 2 guy Cooper Rush heads into free agency in March, our old friend from K.D. Drummond is identifying former No. 1 pick Baker Mayfield as a potential backup quarterback candidate for Dallas.

Writes Drummond: “Cooper Rush played himself into a solid contract this offseason and that money isn’t going to come from a club which has invested $40 million per season in their starter. He’ll get paid by a team looking for a bridge/mentor type to a highly-drafted rookie QB.

In the spirit of a fun barroom discussion, let's break this down from what we know from inside The Star, item-by-item ...

ITEM 1: We're not as certain as some that Rush is getting a monster payday somewhere. Spotrac projects Mayfield’s market value to be a two-year, $13 million contract. ... so with the applied logic, that means Rush "has played himself'' into making more than that.

We've heard NFL speculation about Rush as a "$10 million a year'' guy. Dallas won't pay that, but ...

ITEM 2: If Dallas won't pay the known commodity Rush $10 mil APY, why pay Mayfield $6.5 mil APY? Isn't Rush a relative success ... and isn't Mayfield - his brief Rejuvenation Tour with the Rams notwithstanding - still a relative failure?

ITEM 3: Outside of the recent Andy Dalton deal (which was very much related to a COVID time when Dalton wanted to be in DFW and near his family), the Cowboys simply don't budget big dollars for a backup QB.

Does Rush's 2022 success while making $1 million this year, prove that philosophy is wrong?

Or ... does it actually prove the philosophy is correct? After all, Rush was a scrap-heap guy, cut by this organization and others numerous times - including numerous times by Dallas this season!

We can see the Joneses convincing themselves that Will McClay and Mike McCarthy and staff should simply replicate that success ... in a cap-affordable manner.

ITEM 4: So ... Will Grier? 

He's not actually under contract for next year, so his services would have to be won, too. Grier, presently the third-stringer, makes $965,000 this season. ... and notably, was in competition to beat out Rush all summer long.

Provocative thoughts aside - and the "colorful'' Mayfield is a provocative thought - isn't that the easiest path here?

ITEM 5: About that "colorful'' nature ...

One smart Cowboys tradition: The backup QB here, for most of Troy Aikman's time and all of Dak Prescott's time, has worked in support of the No. 1 guy, not in competition with him. The backup QB in Dallas doesn't do press conferences, let alone national TV commercials.

Mayfield, a Texas native who won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma, has never shown a penchant for "turning it down a notch.'' He's a "Horns Down'' guy and he's a "TD celebration'' guy and he would in this regard be an odd fit at The Star.

ITEM 5: Maybe the Rams have discovered something here, and he sticks in L.A. as Matthew Stafford's backup. (And gets to be "Hollywood!'') But there is something else about Mayfield that doesn't fit: His stature.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course (Grier is barely 6-1). And 6-4, 235-pound QBs with rocket arms and pocket presence don't grow on trees. But when the aforementioned "Will McClay and Mike McCarthy and staff'' go shopping for a backup QB, they will be searching for "oversized guys,'' not "undersized guys.'' And Mayfield is the latter. 

Mayfield was the No. 1 overall pick by Cleveland in the 2018 NFL Draft, yet another Browns goof at QB. They dumped him this year, and then Carolina dumped him as well. There are, simply, limitations to what he can do as an NFL QB ... and we bet Dallas will start with trying to retain Rush and then search hard for smarter ways to spent its $13 million.

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