Weeden joins Cowboys’ record book, but loses

Brandon Weeden got his name in the team record book, but it didn’t help improve his record.

The Dallas Cowboys quarterback, subbing for the injured Tony Romo, completed his first nine passes Sunday. That gave him 21 in a row, dating to his last start — the Arizona game last year.

It broke Romo’s team record and came within three of the NFL mark set by Donovan McNabb.

In the end, though, it proved meaningless.

The Cowboys lost 39-28, Weeden’s ninth consecutive loss as a starter. He has not won a start since the 2012 season.

The Cowboys, though, left upbeat about Weeden’s performance.

“I really like what I saw out there today as far as how he handled himself,” owner Jerry Jones said. “It wasn’t too big for him. I thought he made some real good decisions. He wasn’t throwing the ball but 15-20 yards, but I thought he made some really good decisions. I think we’ve got something to work with here.”

The Cowboys traded for Matt Cassel last week after Romo broke his left collarbone. Romo will miss at least seven games after the Cowboys placed him on short-term injured reserve.

While fans speculated that Cassel soon could take over the starting job from Weeden while Romo sits out, it remains Weeden’s to lose.

He completed 22 of 26 passes for 232 yards with no touchdowns, an interception and an 87.8 passer rating.

“I thought our quarterback did a really good job in this game,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. “I don’t know what his numbers were, but he didn’t throw many incompletions. He had the one poor play before the half, where he moved and threw the interception that gave them a scoring opportunity. But other than that, I thought his decision-making was very good.

“We moved the ball throughout, but unfortunately we didn’t do enough in the second half to continue scoring points.”

Of Weeden’s 26 attempts, he targeted his wideouts only six times. Terrance Williams, the Cowboys’ best receiver with Dez Bryant recovering from foot surgery, had two targets and one drop. Receiver Cole Beasley caught four passes for 49 yards.

“We didn’t have a ton of opportunities [to throw downfield],” Weeden said. “When you get to third-and-8 or third-and-9, and they’re playing man, they’re really not giving that deep threat down the side. It was tough for those receivers to really get on their toes. You’re able to do that when you get them on their heels a little bit, and we never really got that momentum going in the second half.”

Weeden, while calling himself “efficient” and saying the offense “did a lot of really good things,” wanted two throws back. One was a throw down the field to Witten in the third quarter. The other was the interception.

The Cowboys led 21-7 in the second quarter when Weeden, flushed out of the pocket to his left, tried to hit Witten in the flat. Safety William Moore picked off the errant throw and returned it 11 yards to the Dallas 23, where the Falcons capitalized with a touchdown.

“They got a little pressure,” said Weeden, now 5-17 as a starter. “I was scrambling out left, and I know when you’re running like that, that gets hard. Witten was open, but when you’re running that way, it’s hard to throw accurate. I would have rather thrown it up to the 300 level than how I did it.

“It was a stupid mistake on my part, and I’ll remember and I’ll never do it again. You have to put it in the past and learn from it.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2015 at 7:45 PM with the headline "Weeden joins Cowboys’ record book, but loses."