Cowboys QB Joe Milton
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Cowboys QB Joe Milton
If all goes well in Dallas this season, few will even notice that the Cowboys have completely overhauled their quarterback room in the past two months. But Cooper Rush, the team’s reliable backup, is gone, and the subject of one of the Cowboys’ more ill-advised trades–Trey Lance–is gone, too.
The Cowboys hope that it will be Dak Prescott all the way this season. But the two players behind Prescott give the depth chart a new look, and where Dallas goes in an impending decision on whether second-year man Joe Milton or journeyman backup Will Grier is the QB2 could give a glimpse of where the Cowboys may go should they start to consider life after Dak.
Grier was a third-round pick of Carolina in 2019. He is 30 years old and though he played but two NFL games in his career, in his rookie year, he is an affable quarterback with just enough talent to remain on the fringes of the NFL. He has spent two years with the Cowboys as a practice-squad depth options (in 2022 and 2023) but also also bounced through the Bengals, Patriots, Chargers and Eagles franchises before returning to the Cowboys this year.
Teams like Grier enough to keep him around, but they don’t like him enough to play him.
Joe Milton Has Brian Schottenheimer ‘Excited’
If the Cowboys make Grier QB2, then it probably means the eventual replacement for Prescott will still be acquired in some future draft or trade. But Milton, at age 25, is a different story. If he impresses in training camp and in his preseason appearances–he figures to have many–then it could be a signal that Milton is being groomed as a potential Prescott follow-up.
This week, according to the Cowboys website, coach Brian Schottenheimer was effusive in his Milton praise.
“So excited about Joe,” said Schottenheimer. “I was excited about Joe before we got him. We all reach out to people that you know. People that you trust, people that have been exposed to said player in college, in different programs, friends that have been around him to this day. … From the time he’s been here. The work ethic is incredible.”
Cowboys Need Some Reliability
That’s an interesting emphasis from Schottenheimer, because if there has been a criticism of Milton since the time he spent at Tennessee and Michigan in college, it’s that he had a rocket arm but lacked the discipline and work ethic needed to hone his talent.
“He’s one of the first people in the building,” Schottenheimer said. “He’s one of the last to leave. The way he’s attacked the playbook and how he’s picking it up is incredible, and it’s been fun for me to watch Dak and Will [Grier] take a mentorship role with Joe.”
Still, observers have said Milton is struggling in practice. As the team site’s Tommy Yarrish wrote of Milton’s debut:
“Quarterback Joe Milton had a roller coaster day with two touchdowns and two interceptions during the media viewing period in OTA practice. In several instances, Milton struggled to get through his reads and was forced to roll out and enter the scramble drill … Being able to see the field from the pocket is certainly an area of his game where improvement will be needed, especially if he’s going to be relied upon as the backup quarterback should Dak Prescott not be available.”