Michael Gallup: Career Stats, Injuries, and What Happened to the Cowboys’ No. 2 Receiver

Michael Gallup: The Dallas Cowboys Receiver Who Hit 1,107 Yards, Tore His ACL, and Walked Away at 28

Quick Profile

Michael Gallup was born March 4, 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up in Monroe, Georgia, about 50 miles east of the city. He stands 6-foot-1 and played at 198 pounds during his NFL career. The Dallas Cowboys drafted him in the third round of the 2018 NFL Draft, 81st overall, out of Colorado State. He spent six seasons in Dallas, then signed with the Las Vegas Raiders in spring 2024, retired before training camp started, came out of retirement in March 2025, signed with the Washington Commanders, and was released in August 2025 before the regular season began. He has not played a regular season game since 2023.

Career totals: 266 receptions, 3,744 receiving yards, 21 touchdowns, 86 games.

From Monroe, Georgia to Butler Community College: The Road That Almost Didn’t Happen

Gallup was the youngest of eight children, six of whom were adopted. His mother adopted him at ten months old. Two of his siblings came from India, three from West African nations. He was born in Atlanta and adopted into a family in Monroe, where he attended Monroe Area High School playing quarterback in a triple-option system. His senior year he switched to wide receiver and running back, scored 17 touchdowns, and also ran track, played basketball, and played baseball.

Poor grades after high school meant no four-year scholarship offers came through. He enrolled at Butler Community College in Kansas, where he led the team with 780 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns as a freshman in 2014. An ankle injury cut his sophomore year to three games. Then Colorado State took a chance on him.

He rewarded them immediately. In his first season with the Rams in 2016, he recorded 76 receptions for 1,272 yards and 14 touchdowns, tied for first in the Mountain West Conference in receiving yards. His senior year was historic for the program: 100 receptions (a Colorado State record that still stands), 1,413 yards, seven touchdowns. He was a consensus All-American and a Fred Biletnikoff Award finalist. PFF ranked him eighth nationally among draft-eligible receivers in yards per route run. That’s genuinely elite production, not just conference inflation. The combine gave him a 4.51 40-yard dash, average athleticism, but the tape showed someone who didn’t need elite speed to get open.

Rookie Year in Dallas, and the Night His World Fell Apart

His first NFL season was respectable. He played all 16 games, started eight, caught 33 passes for 507 yards and two touchdowns. The Cowboys released Dez Bryant that April and entered the season with a receiver-by-committee approach that wasn’t working. They traded for Amari Cooper in October, which changed everything, and Gallup benefited from the attention Cooper drew on the other side.

Then, on November 18, 2018, after a Cowboys win over the Atlanta Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a game that was essentially a homecoming for Gallup since he grew up two hours away, his sister found him in the locker room and told him his brother Andrew had died. Andrew took his own life the previous day. Gallup stayed in Georgia with his family. He didn’t travel back to Dallas with the team.

Four days later, on Thanksgiving, he played against Washington. He caught two passes and received a game ball from coach Jason Garrett. The funeral was the next morning, Friday. He flew back to Georgia. He was 22 years old.

A year later, playing against Detroit on the anniversary, Gallup had a career-high nine catches for 148 yards. After the game he said his brother knew he’d always loved this game and was watching from up there. The Gallup family set up the Andrew Gallup African Children’s Scholarship Fund in his memory, honoring Andrew’s love of learning. Andrew was born in Sierra Leone during the civil war and was one of the three siblings adopted from West Africa.

2019: The Best Season He Ever Had

Sixty-six receptions. 1,107 yards. Six touchdowns. He averaged 79.1 yards per game across 14 games played. He ranked as the WR17 in fantasy football, scoring 15.2 points per game. He and Amari Cooper became the seventh tandem in Cowboys history to both surpass 1,000 receiving yards in the same season. Dak Prescott threw for more than 4,000 yards for the first time in franchise history, and Gallup was a direct reason why.

His average depth of target that year put him in the intermediate-to-deep category consistently. He wasn’t a slot receiver running three-yard hitches. He was winning downfield against press coverage on routes that required timing and footwork. That’s the version of Gallup the Cowboys signed up for when they extended him.

The 2020 season produced 59 catches for 843 yards and five touchdowns across 16 games, which looks like a modest decline but requires context. Prescott broke his ankle in Week 5 and missed the rest of the year. Andy Dalton, Ben DiNucci, and Garrett Gilbert started games at quarterback. Gallup still managed 1,248 air yards and an 88.3 percent snap share. The production decline wasn’t his.

Calf, Then ACL: Two Years That Changed Everything

The 2021 season started badly. A calf strain in Week 1 sent him to injured reserve before he’d caught a single pass. He returned in Week 7 and finished with 35 receptions for 445 yards and two touchdowns in nine games. Solid but limited.

Then, on January 2, 2022, in a Week 17 game against Arizona, he tore his ACL. Surgery came February 10. The Cowboys had him on the physically unable to perform list when training camp opened that August. Their own medical staff acknowledged he might not be ready for Week 1, though Gallup himself expressed optimism. Owner Jerry Jones confirmed in preseason that he was unlikely to play from the start.

Here’s the part that doesn’t quite add up: six weeks before his surgery, on March 13, 2022, the Cowboys signed Gallup to a five-year, $62.5 million contract extension. They knew he was injured and committed to him anyway. That decision reflected real organizational faith. What followed never justified it, through no obvious fault of Gallup’s, but the contract became an anchor.

He played 14 games in 2022 and posted 39 receptions for 424 yards and four touchdowns. That’s a functional receiver recovering from a torn ACL. It’s not a $12 million-per-year receiver. He contributed five catches for 46 yards in a Wild Card playoff win over Tampa Bay. Then 2023 arrived: 34 receptions, 418 yards, two touchdowns across a full 17-game season. His average depth of target was 11.2 yards. PFF graded his overall season at 61.5, 67th of 85 qualified wide receivers. Three drops on the year.

CeeDee Lamb had become unguardable. Brandin Cooks was added. Gallup was the third option, then the fourth in some weeks. The Cowboys released him March 15, 2024, alongside linebacker Leighton Vander Esch. Cap relief was the stated reason. Nobody argued with it publicly.

His Entire Stats Career, Season by Season

This table covers every NFL season through his final regular-season appearance in 2023.

The ACL year is 2021 going into 2022. Everything before January 2022 is one player. Everything after is someone working to get back to him. The 2022 yards-per-reception number (10.9) compared to his career average (14.1) is the clearest single-number summary of what the injury cost him.

How He Actually Played: Route Running, Not Speed

His combine 40 time was 4.51 seconds. That’s average for the position. He was never going to run past cornerbacks on go routes every week. What he did instead was win with footwork at the break point, precise route timing with Prescott’s release, and genuine effort after the catch. His career average of 14.1 yards per reception is better than receivers with significantly more athletic testing profile. You don’t average 14.1 yards per catch over 266 receptions by running underneath routes.

At his best in 2019, he was running intermediate and deep routes with enough subtlety to beat man coverage and enough reliability to be Prescott’s second read on critical downs. When the Cowboys had Cooper drawing attention on one side and Gallup working the other, opposing defensive coordinators genuinely had a problem. That version of the Cowboys offense finished the year with two 1,000-yard receivers for the first time in franchise history.

Post-ACL, something in his route sharpness never fully returned. The 2022 yards-per-reception drop from his pre-injury averages tells that story. He was reliable in traffic and rarely a liability, but the clean separation he’d generated against press coverage in 2019 was harder to find on tape by 2023.

The Las Vegas Retirement Nobody Saw Coming

April 30, 2024: the Raiders signed Gallup to a one-year deal worth up to $3 million. July 24, 2024: he retired. He never reported to training camp. The Raiders placed him on the reserve/retired list. GM Tom Telesco called it stunning.

What Gallup said later, after he came out of retirement, was that leaving Dallas was harder than he expected. Six years with the same quarterback, the same facility, the same coaching voices, the same city. Moving to Las Vegas felt overwhelming. That’s a genuinely honest answer, and a strange one to hear from a professional athlete, which is probably why it reads as true. He walked away from a $3 million contract because he wasn’t okay.

He was 28.

Washington, and the End of the Comeback

March 8, 2025: NFL Network reported he intended to return. March 20, 2025: the Commanders signed him. The connection was Dan Quinn, who had been the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator from 2021 to 2023 and knew Gallup personally. The Commanders also had Dorance Armstrong and Tyler Biadasz from the Dallas roster. It felt like a calculated soft landing into a familiar environment.

It didn’t work out. The Commanders’ receiver room was stacked: Terry McLaurin as the clear number one, Deebo Samuel added as a major acquisition, Noah Brown, K.J. Osborn, and Luke McCaffrey all competing for the remaining snaps. Gallup dealt with a hamstring issue in minicamp. On August 25, 2025, Washington released him before the 53-man roster cutdown.

He has not signed with another team since. At 30 years old as of this writing, his NFL career totals stand at 266 receptions, 3,744 yards, and 21 touchdowns across 86 regular-season games. All of them came in a Cowboys uniform. The Raiders stint produced zero regular-season snaps. The Commanders stint produced the same.

Where Gallup Fits in Cowboys Receiver History

This is a useful comparison, though it cuts both ways.

Gallup spent more time in Dallas than Cooper and produced comparable yards-per-reception. He never had Bryant’s touchdown volume, never had Lamb’s target dominance, but he was a legitimate piece of a genuinely good offense for three seasons before the injury changed the equation. The Cowboys gave him $62.5 million because they believed he was a core part of the next version of that offense. He averaged 9.8 yards per game in the three seasons after the ACL tear compared to 63.2 in 2019. That contract, evaluated honestly, did not return value. But the decision to sign it wasn’t irrational given who he was before January 2022.

He played six full seasons in Dallas with the same quarterback the entire time. Prescott threw his first NFL touchdown pass. They grew up in the league together, more or less. That connection, and the trauma of losing it when he signed with Las Vegas, probably explains the retirement more than any physical reason. Some players are built for one place. Gallup might have been one of them.