DALLAS - Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jalon Daniels, the first undrafted rookie ever to start at quarterback for the franchise, earned his first NFL win Thursday night as the Bucs defeated the Dallas Cowboys 24-16, snapping a four-game losing streak to open the 2026 season.
Daniels was efficient in his second career start, completing 19 of 25 passes for 189 yards, one touchdown, no interceptions and a 110.2 passer rating. The Buccaneers’ 419 total yards marked just the ninth time in NFL history that a team topped 400 yards of offense in a game while starting an undrafted rookie quarterback.
The ground game drove the victory. Running back Bucky Irving carried for a career-best 165 yards as Tampa Bay rushed for 241 yards total, exploiting what ranks as the league’s second-worst rush defense. The Bucs ran on 39 of their 65 offensive snaps, their most ground-heavy script of the season.
“It was a plan to attack, not from a Dallas standpoint, from our standpoint,” Head Coach Todd Bowles said. “When you’ve got a young quarterback, you’ve got to lean on the ground game a little bit more. I thought the offensive line took it upon themselves, as well as Bucky making some great cuts and some great plays to make that happen. And that made the game easier for Jalon, which was good to see.”
The game turned on a decisive sequence to open the second half. Irving broke a 72-yard run on the first play after halftime, and the Bucs scored one play later on Emeka Egbuka’s 14-yard end-around. On the next possession, Daniels found wide receiver Tez Johnson for a 64-yard completion, setting up Irving’s one-yard scoring run. The two plays of 60 or more yards were the first such pair for Tampa Bay since a win over Philadelphia last September and only the eighth time in franchise history a game featured two scrimmage plays of that length.
“Well, I would say it’s a pretty good drive,” Daniels said of the go-ahead march. “You go out there and hand the ball off twice, then you get a touchdown. So, it was a great job. I think that the guys up front, they worked their tail off. And the fact that they were able to go out there and be able to open up those run gaps, being able to open up the holes for our running backs to be able to run through and be able to get touchdowns, I got to give hats off to the guys up front.”
Daniels, who is also the first rookie quarterback of any kind to start in the NFL this 2026 season, credited the young skill players around him. “I think their work ethic is huge,” he said. “They go out there every single week, no matter what’s going on, try to do everything they can to be able to understand the play that we’re running in, why we’re running, the intent of it and go out there and be able to execute it.”
Bowles echoed the assessment. “Offensively, I think that we went out there and [were] able to execute our game plan, giving the ball to our playmakers in space and allowing them to be able to make plays,” he said. Tampa Bay returns home for its next game as Daniels looks to build on his first NFL victory.