First start not a dream win for Cowboys QB Kellen Moore

Jim Kelly walked up the tunnel with Kellen Moore after the Buffalo Bills’ 16-6 victory. The Hall of Fame quarterback offered a few words of encouragement to the young Dallas Cowboys quarterback after his first career start.

“He’s obviously a guy that a lot of us have looked up to,” Moore recounted. “He basically said to keep fighting and things are going to turn out well. Obviously, that’s a guy if he speaks to you, you listen very closely. He’s got a tremendous amount of respect, and [is a] Hall of Famer and all that good stuff.”

That might rank as the most memorable moment of Sunday’s game for the former Boise State star.

Cowboys fans had clamored for Moore to play for a few weeks, but in the end it was the same story, 10th verse this season.

While former Cowboys backup Brandon Weeden was breaking a personal 11-game losing streak for the Houston Texans, the Cowboys lost for the 10th time this season with a backup quarterback. Weeden went 0-3 before he was replaced by Matt Cassel and then released. Cassel went 1-6 before being replaced by Moore as the starter this week.

“We certainly need to get better offensively,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. “We need to score more points, and the passing game is a big part of that right now. We did a good job running the football at different times, but again we weren’t able to sustain the drives.

“It was Kellen Moore’s first start. I thought he did some good things. He handled the conditions well, handled the environment well and operated well throughout the game. Ultimately, we didn’t do enough offensively.”

For the fourth game this season, the Cowboys failed to score a touchdown. They have averaged just 15.2 points per game without Tony Romo.

For the seventh time this season, the Cowboys failed to pass for 200 yards. They average 186.7 passing yards per game with their backup quarterbacks.

“Obviously that’s our thing: We’ve got to score more points,” Moore said. “Six points isn’t going to win you many games, if any. That comes down to third downs. That comes down to being in the red zone, scoring touchdowns, not field goals, and obviously turnovers have an impact on that as well.”

The Cowboys have struggled to win without Romo, going 7-19 with their backup quarterbacks since Romo became the starter in 2006. They had hoped Moore might jump-start their offense after making his NFL debut last week.

Instead, he completed only 13 of 31 passes for 186 yards with no touchdowns, an interception and a 48.6 passer rating. Counting his relief appearance last week against the New York Jets, Moore has completed 28 of 56 passes for 344 yards with one touchdown, four interceptions and a 45.5 rating.

Still, offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, Moore’s biggest supporter, wasn’t disappointed in the quarterback’s first start.

“I thought he did a really good job,” Linehan said. “He managed the game. We use that term a lot, but he did. There were times when things were there, and he made plays and didn’t try to force things. His one turnover was really just a little bit of an off throw, but was just a bad break. Sometimes on off throws, you don’t catch them but that ball ended up going up.

“It seems like it’s been that kind of year for us, but I was really, really happy with how he played and performed and competed. It wasn’t perfect, made some mistakes, but as far as I saw out there, he executed our game plan to a T.”

Moore will get another start as the Cowboys end the season Sunday against the NFC East champion Washington Redskins. Executive vice president Stephen Jones said the team will reevaluate the position after the season.

“He was calm in there and made some plays,” Jones said of Moore. “It’s a game of inches, and if a few of those balls go his way, then it’d the difference in us walking away with a win.

“He’ll get another chance this week against the Redskins, and then we’ll evaluate the whole thing.”

This story was originally published December 27, 2015 at 7:23 PM with the headline "First start not a dream win for Cowboys QB Kellen Moore."