Cowboys sign former Texas football QB Garrett Gilbert to practice squad

The Dallas Cowboys are the latest team to give a shot at former Texas football quarterback Garrett Gilbert as a backup, or on their practice squad.

Some of the biggest news that emerged out of the weekend in the NFL was the injury to the former Mississippi State Bulldogs star and Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Dak Prescott. In an eventual win over the NFC East division foe New York Giants, Prescott injured his ankle on a rough hit that would cause a compound fracture and dislocation on his right let. And now that Prescott is injured, it appears that the Cowboys are turning to a former Texas football five-star recruit to add depth at the quarterback position.

Prescott will at least miss the rest of the 2020 season, and it’s never easy to tell how long injuries of that nature will take to recover from. Washington veteran quarterback and former Utah Utes star Alex Smith just made his return last weekend after suffering a brutal lower body injury roughly two years ago.

And there were questions as to whether Smith would ever play another down in the NFL again. He had to go through more than a dozen surgeries and procedures before he was able to return to the gridiron.

Now that Dak is out for the Cowboys, former Cincinnati Bengals and TCU Horned Frogs signal caller Andy Dalton should take over as the starting quarterback. Backing up Dalton after the Prescott ankle injury is Ben DiNucci.

But beyond DiNucci on the depth chart, the Cowboys didn’t have anyone that was on the roster to play at the quarterback position. That’s why they signed former Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert to their practice squad this week. Gilbert is likely to sit behind DiNucci on the depth chart from here on out.

The 29-year-old Buffalo, NY, native Gilbert played at Texas for three seasons. He was thrown into the fire during the 2009 BCS National Championship Game, and that seemed like it really derailed his career at Texas before it got started. Gilbert didn’t find much success at all on the Forty Acres. And after three years playing for Texas, he wound up transferring to SMU.

Gilbert has now spent bits and pieces of more than five seasons in the NFL with a lot of different teams including the Carolina Panthers, New England Patriots, Cleveland Browns, and St. Louis/LA Rams, among others. Now he can add the Cowboys to the list of teams he’s been a part of.

Gilbert did see the field in five different games last season with the Browns, behind Baker Mayfield on the depth chart. But he only got to attempt three passes in those five games, none of which he completed.

Somehow Gilbert is still chugging along in the NFL almost a decade after he transferred out of the Texas program. He’s made an impressive career for himself given the trajectory of his career out of college.