It's been a weird 24 hours for the Dallas Cowboys.
In the span of about 90 minutes on Tuesday, Jerry Jones made two moves that could not be more contradictory: he traded for a wide receiver at the deadline – indicating the team still thinks there's hope for a playoff run – and then announced that his starting quarterback wasn't coming back anytime soon.
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It was a chaotic yet weirdly-on-brand morning for Jones, whose GM acumen has stayed front and center in the spotlight this season as things have continued to fall off the rails. But new wide receiver Jonathan Mingo won't be catching passes from Prescott anytime soon, as Jones announced that the team is likely to put Dak Prescott on injured reserve. He broke the news during his weekly interview with local Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan.
Jerry Jones confirms that Cowboys are going to put Dak Prescott on Injured Reserve
"It's iffy," Jones said about Prescott's injury timeline. "But it's an extended period of time here. I wouldn't dare make a prediction on when it could be, but it's likely that we'll IR him. So we'll see kind of how his rehab goes."
All in all, it's not surprising to hear that Prescott's headed to IR – that always felt like a growing possibility once reports started surfacing after Week 9's loss to Atlanta that his injury was far worse than originally thought. In fact, when Jones came out immediately after the game and said he 'was concerned' with the injury, the writing was on the wall.
Now, the Cowboys will have to try and climb back to .500 before Christmas without Prescott. Not only that, but three of their next four games – the minimum amount of time that any player is required to miss when put on IR – are against NFC East opponents.
The silver lining, if you're into that sort of thing, is that three of their next four games – Eagles, Texans, Giants – are at home. (For the sake of our collective sanity we're just going to ignore the fact that they haven't won a home game yet this season.)
Jones also talked a bit about the decision to go with Cooper Rush over Trey Lance, although he left the door open for both of them to see action over the next month. But when you're debating the merits of starting Cooper Rush or Trey Lance in early November, that speaks for itself.