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Tribune News Service
Tribune News Service
Sport
Stefan Stevenson

The biggest reason Cam Newton is unlikely to join Dallas Cowboys as Dak Prescott’s backup

The Dallas Cowboys are down to Dak Prescott and Cooper Rush at quarterback.

Are you comfortable with Rush? Would you rather see a more experience veteran behind Prescott? Sort of like Andy Dalton a year ago. Or perhaps Cam Newton now?

The New England Patriots cuts Newton Tuesday morning, leaving the 32-year-old, 10-year vet available on the open market.

Of course, the Cowboys are likely to wait for all the cuts across the league to trickle out Tuesday before jumping to a rash decision.

The biggest reason why the Cowboys probably won’t be interested? Newton has refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The Boston Globe reported Newton was forced to miss practice last week because of COVID-19 protocols. Players who have been vaccinated have less restrictions and can return to action quicker if they come in contact with someone infected with coronavirus. Unvaccinated players are forced to isolate away from the team much longer. Furthermore, Newton’s ability has diminished in the past few years as he dealt with injuries. He threw for eight touchdowns and 10 interceptions in 15 games a year ago for the Patriots.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was more opaque and vague than usual when asked whether the team would be looking for a free agent quarterback Tuesday morning.

“I think that you got to assume with [Rush’s] knowledge and what we’re doing offensively and what we’re doing with the existing personnel, that we’re going to be opening with, you got to assume you got a pretty high bar here in terms of what’s the most effective way to play if you didn’t have Dak now,” Jones said on KRLD/105.3 “The Fan.” “And all of that said, it’s a high bar when you got the background in it that Cooper’s got. So, we’ll see how that goes.”

Jones added, “Those are highly competitive things and for obvious reasons we won’t be commenting a lot on it.”

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