Jalon Daniels Beats the Cowboys as Mayfield Watches

Jalon Daniels went 19 of 25 for 189 yards and a touchdown as Tampa Bay beat Dallas 24-16 on Thursday Night Football. The Buccaneers walked into AT&T Stadium at 0-4. They left 1-4, and the undrafted rookie had his first NFL win.

Baker Mayfield, on a three-year, $165 million extension, watched it from the sideline with a dislocated right thumb. Ten quarterbacks taken in the 2026 draft still have not started a game.

An Undrafted Rookie Beat Dallas on a Short Week

Daniels is 23, wears No. 10, and was making his second start, four days after a 17-14 loss to Green Bay. Dallas scored first, a 70-yard drive on nine plays. Tampa answered with the kind of drive a young quarterback is told to live on.

THURSDAY NIGHT IN ARLINGTON

1. Oct. 8, first quarter: After Dallas’s opening touchdown, Daniels directs a 15-play, 73-yard opening march that takes 10 minutes 58 seconds, goes 8-of-8 for 49 yards, and ends on a 5-yard touchdown pass to Bucky Irving.
2. Halftime: Cowboys 10, Buccaneers 7. Tampa’s offense has gone quiet after the long drive, the longest timed possession for the club since Nov. 4, 2007.
3. Third quarter: Irving rips a 72-yard run on the first snap of the half, the second-longest rush in the league this season. Emeka Egbuka scores on the next play, a 14-yard end-around, his first career rushing touchdown. Daniels then hits Tez Johnson for 64 yards, and Irving punches in from the 1. Tampa has 17 points in the quarter and a 21-10 lead.
4. Fourth quarter: Leading 24-10 with 8:36 left, Todd Bowles goes for it on fourth-and-goal from the 1. Sean Tucker is stuffed. Dak Prescott answers with a 10-play, 99-yard touchdown. The two-point throw fails. Alex Anzalone intercepts a tipped ball, Irving gains 22 yards on second-and-12, and Daniels kneels.

NFL Research timed that first drive at 10:58, the third-longest Buccaneers possession since 2000. Daniels finished with a 110.2 passer rating, no interceptions, and 23 rushing yards. The Bucs put up 419 yards of offense, their high for the year, and played their first turnover-free game of 2026.

Dallas fell to 2-3. CeeDee Lamb, coming off a 17-catch game, had one catch for 4 yards in the first half and left with a quad injury. Prescott’s offense scored three points across the seven drives after that opening touchdown, then needed a gift on the 1-yard line to look alive.

Ten Drafted Quarterbacks Have Yet to Start

The 2026 draft spent two first-round picks on quarterbacks, Fernando Mendoza at No. 1 overall and Ty Simpson, and took 10 passers in all, none in the second round. None of them had started an NFL game when Daniels jogged out in Green Bay, and none of them had started when he beat Dallas.

He was not one of those 10. Kansas kept him for six seasons and 45 starts, and he left as the school’s first four-time captain. Thirty-two teams passed in April. Tampa Bay signed him for a $25,000 bonus on a three-year, $3.125 million deal with $272,500 guaranteed, then listed him behind Mayfield, Jake Browning, and Connor Bazelak.

Browning had 10 career starts from his years in Cincinnati and $400,000 guaranteed on the one-year deal Tampa gave him to be the backup. Daniels beat him in camp anyway. The Bucs released Browning and waived Bazelak on Aug. 30, leaving Mayfield and the undrafted rookie as the only quarterbacks on the 53. Easton Stick stayed on the practice squad.

Daniels’s own view of the label is blunt. He said he looks at himself as a UDFA rookie trying to make plays, and that remembering where he came from is the point. He has done the underdog bit before. In 2021 he led Kansas to a 57-56 overtime win at Texas as a 31-point underdog, ending it with a 2-point pass to walk-on fullback Jared Casey.

THE RECORD BOOK DANIELS ENTERED

• Winless teams: He is the first undrafted rookie starting quarterback in the common draft era, since 1967, to win a game for a team that entered the day without a victory.
• This season: He is the first rookie quarterback to start an NFL game in 2026.
• Prime time: He is the fourth undrafted rookie to win a prime-time game since 2000, and the second to do it on the road.
• Dallas: He is the second undrafted quarterback to start and beat the Cowboys, after Washington’s Ed Rubbert in a 1987 strike game.
• Tampa Bay: He is the first undrafted rookie to start at quarterback for the Buccaneers, and the first Bucs rookie to start at the position since Jameis Winston in 2015.
• First two starts: OptaSTATS says he is the only quarterback, with starts tracked since 1950, to complete at least 70 percent of his passes, throw a touchdown, and rush for 20-plus yards in each of his first two starts.
• Yardage: Thursday was the ninth time in NFL history a team topped 400 yards of offense with an undrafted rookie at quarterback.

The drafted class is not owed a start on a calendar. Injuries and depth charts decide that. The comparison still sits there: the one who went unpicked is 1-1 as a starter, with a prime-time road win, and the ones whose names were called are still waiting.

Mayfield’s $165 Million Deal Is on the Sideline

Mayfield dislocated the thumb on his throwing hand in the fourth quarter of a 23-16 loss to Minnesota on Sep. 27, on a fourth-and-1 throw that Blake Cashman hit and Andrew Van Ginkel intercepted. An MRI showed no ligament or tendon damage. Bowles said the injury should not need surgery and that Mayfield would be out a minimum of three weeks, with the plan to keep him on the 53-man roster.

That timeline, announced Sep. 28, pointed to Week 7 at Carolina as the earliest return. Stitches came out of the thumb around the Dallas game because of how it bent on impact. Mayfield stood on the sideline without a wrap and wrote on a clipboard with the injured hand. He has not resumed throwing.

Five days before the 2026 season he signed the $165 million extension. Through three starts he had the lowest EPA per dropback, -0.30, of any quarterback with at least 50 pass attempts, per Next Gen Stats. He was 61 of 96 for a 63.5 percent clip, with two touchdowns, two interceptions, and an 80.0 rating. Those three games were all losses. The last Buccaneers starter other than Mayfield was Tom Brady in 2022, ending a run of 57 consecutive starts since Mayfield arrived in 2023.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The injury: Right-thumb dislocation, no ligament or tendon damage on the MRI, no surgery planned, stitches already out.
• The roster: Mayfield remains on the 53. Bowles has not put him on injured reserve.
• The throwing: As of Oct. 9 he had not resumed throwing, which is the skill the job actually requires.
• The money: The three-year, $165 million extension is already on the books.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Week 6: Whether Mayfield is even in the throwing progression before the Steelers visit on Oct. 18.
• Week 7: Whether the original Carolina target still holds, or slips.
• The job: Whether the starter’s job is still waiting, untouched, when he can grip the ball again.

Daniels has been careful with that last point. He said his job as QB2 is to move the ball and still operate as if the QB1 is in, copying what Mayfield did in camp and in the first three weeks. Before the Packers start, Mayfield told him he had been dreaming of the chance and to stay composed and play as yourself. That was advice from a teammate. It reads differently after a prime-time win.

Bucky Irving Did the Damage Daniels Needed

Bowles did not hide the plan. With a young quarterback, he said, you lean on the ground game, and the line and Irving took that on. Tampa ran on 39 of 65 snaps, 60 percent, its most run-heavy script of the season, and piled up 241 rushing yards and two 60-yard plays against the league’s second-worst run defense.

Irving’s 165 rushing yards were a career high. The two touchdowns, the 5-yard catch and the 1-yard run, were his first career multi-score game. Next Gen Stats tracked the 72-yarder at 20.43 mph over 90.50 yards of actual distance. He later picked up 22 yards to ice the win. Egbuka, slow to start the year, led the team with six catches and added that 14-yard score. Johnson’s 64-yard catch-and-run was Daniels’s longest completion.

Two plays of 60-plus yards in one game had not happened for Tampa since a win over Philadelphia last September, and it was only the eighth such game in franchise history. Daniels, asked about the go-ahead sequence, did not dress it up. He said they handed the ball off twice and got a touchdown, and he pointed at the line for the holes.

TWO STARTS, TWO VERY DIFFERENT NIGHTS

The Packers start still had a first in it. Daniels ran for 55 yards, a Buccaneers rookie-quarterback rushing record that had belonged to Parnell Dickinson since 1976, and he threw his first NFL touchdown, 10 yards to Kenny Gainwell on the run, the first scoring pass by an undrafted rookie quarterback in franchise history. Green Bay also took the two interceptions the other way for 10 points, hit him seven times, and sacked him three times. He was 8 of 13 for 74 yards before halftime and 11 of 14 for 74 after it.

Thursday cut the mistakes and cut the sacks. Passing yards of 189 and rushing yards of 241 are different columns from the 419 yards of total offense, which nets out sacks, losses, and kneel-downs. The night was a run game with an efficient passer attached, and that is the version of Daniels Tampa can live with until Mayfield can throw.

The Cowboys Could Not Stop a 241-Yard Ground Game

Dallas came in looking at a get-right home date against a 28th-ranked offense and an undrafted starter on a short week. The front generated seven pressures on Daniels and almost no consistent push. The edges failed. Irving bounced outside, and the tackling on the 72-yard run was poor enough to show up in every replay.

DaRon Bland allowed three catches on five targets for 91 yards and dropped a throw that was a pick-six if he holds it. Reddy Steward allowed five catches on five targets for 25 yards and a touchdown. Joey Porter Jr., the new corner, was out with an illness. The closeness of 24-16 hid how the second half looked from the Dallas sideline, which is to say like a team that had already lost.

Prescott’s night matched the defense. After the opening score, the next seven drives produced a field goal’s worth of points. Lamb’s quad ended his night as a factor. When Bowles handed them the ball on the 1, they finally moved 99 yards, then failed the two-point try and later threw the ball Anzalone caught. Three turnovers, a run defense that could not set an edge, and a pass rush that never made the undrafted quarterback uncomfortable for long: that is the Cowboys’ side of the ledger.

Bowles had his own mess. Going for it at the 1 instead of a field goal that would have made it a three-score game woke Dallas up. He also went to a knee on the sideline late, a scene the league broadcast did not treat as routine. Tampa still avoided its first 0-5 start since 2013. The four losses before Dallas were all one-possession games. This one was an 8-point win that needed a tipped-ball interception to feel settled.

How Clean Was Daniels on Thursday Night?

Cleaner than Green Bay, and not perfect. He did not turn the ball over, which is the bar Tampa set after two interceptions in his first start. He also threw a ball into Bland’s chest in a spot where a catch-and-score ties the game, and Bland dropped it. Film of the night shows a quarterback who can scramble and who holds the ball through open windows. That is the same kid who looked rushed against Jonathan Gannon’s looks a few days earlier.

Six months ago, if you would’ve told me that my first win would’ve been on a Thursday night, Prime football game, I don’t know what I would’ve told you.

Jalon Daniels, Buccaneers quarterback, postgame at AT&T Stadium

He also said the win means everything, and that you go through every emotion because it prepares you for what comes next. Preseason he was 27 of 44 for 239 yards, one touchdown, and no interceptions, plus 37 rushing yards and a score, enough to dump a veteran with 10 starts. The regular season has been narrower: manage the run game, take the shots that are there (Johnson, 64 yards), and do not give the ball back.

That is a different night than Mayfield’s first three, which were negative-EPA and winless. It is also 189 passing yards, not a takeover. The people who wanted a coronation and the people who wanted a fluke are arguing past the same tape. The tape is a short-week road win in which the backup did not beat himself, the starter’s $165 million deal stayed in a coat sleeve, and a defense that was supposed to feast on a rookie did not.

The Steelers Visit Tampa on Oct. 18

Pittsburgh comes to Raymond James Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 18, at 1 p.m. ET, with Aaron Rodgers. That is Daniels’s third start if Mayfield still is not throwing, and the calendar says he will not be. Bowles’s original three-week floor, counted from Sep. 27, already pointed past this game and toward Carolina in Week 7. Nothing in the last two weeks has sped that up.

Tampa’s offense finally had its best night of the year, and it did it without the quarterback the franchise just paid. Mayfield will get the job back when his hand can grip the ball, unless the wins pile up in a way this building has not planned for. Daniels gets the Steelers in the meantime, 1-1 as a starter, with a prime-time road win the 10 drafted quarterbacks of his class still do not have.

The last snap in Dallas was a kneel. Irving had just picked up 22 yards, Anzalone had the ball, and the undrafted quarterback who began camp as QB4 took a knee in Jerry’s stadium with the clock dying and the Cowboys at 2-3.