Sports Illustraded: The Cowboys Are Now Fully Dak Prescott’s Team. He Says He’s Ready
By Albert Breer
August 06, 2018
OXNARD, Calif. — The excuses might as well be right there for Dak Prescott, sitting on the coffee table in this spacious Residence Inn guest room. He could tell you that his NFL sophomore slump was thanks to Dez Bryant and Jason Witten getting older. Or to some moving parts along the offensive line. Or to Zeke Elliott’s suspension. Or to the fact that expectations were out of whack coming off his starry rookie campaign.
The now-firmly-installed face of America’s Team reached for none of those. And that’s probably why the people around Cowboys camp talk about him like they do.
“It was me,” Prescott told me on Saturday, without a second of hesitation. “It’s just about being more consistent. I simply was trying to do too much last year. And as I was trying to do too much, I was getting away from my simple reads. I was maybe passing by my second read to try to get to my third read, or skipping over one or two, trying to get to the big throw early, rushing things.
“I was wanting to make that big play, I was wanting to do the spectacular. [Ex-Mississippi State] coach [Dan] Mullen told me when I was in college, a lot of being a quarterback is making a lot of unspectacular plays that don’t necessarily look great but turn out to be the right thing. And so I think in Year 2, I was simply trying to do too much.”
In some ways, the 2018 Cowboys will need more from Prescott, and he knows it. But it’s probably not in the ways you’re thinking.
That’s what he learned going through last year. The idea of taking over after losing a big name or two, and trying to be more as a quarterback? He’s been through that, and now, as he sees it, is when his growth will come through taking an approach counter to all of that.
“I have bigger and higher expectations for myself than anyone else does or ever will, so for me it’s not trying to live up to expectations,” Prescott continued. “But you want to win, and you want to make that play to win. It’s that, trying to win on every throw, I got myself out of position. Sometimes you want it too much. You look at some of my interceptions, it’s simple as that.”
So his hope is that his place as a player will, in a way, shrink. Conversely, his place on the team will have to grow, and we’ll explain that.
In this week’s jam-packed MMQB, we’re going to take you through my August tour, with a look at Philip Rivers’s future, a wider-ranging peek into Rams camp, an explanation of the Browns’ quarterback decision-making, the culture Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch are building in San Francisco, and some info on Odell Beckham and the officiating of the helmet rule as the Bears and Ravens staffs saw it.
But we’re starting with Prescott and his place within the league’s flagship franchise, and how the change there was signified by a phone call he got on May 1. On the line was Jason Witten and, whether it was intended that way or not, it became a passing-of-the-torch moment for a quarterback who was three months shy of his 25th birthday.
“It came out that he was retiring and he spent that week—I’m thinking about it, I’m figuring out what I’m going to do,” Prescott said. “And it was then when he called me, two days before his actual retirement speech, he was like, ‘I’m making it official.’ We had a heart-to-heart about how great it was playing with each other, and he encouraged me to be that guy.”
There was a reason why that talk hit Prescott a certain way, too.
“Witt handled things in the locker room, off the field, on the field, he was the ultimate leader,” Prescott said. “He shaped me, shaped some other guys in the locker room to be that leader. [During that conversation], he was telling me, You’re that guy, you can be that guy, go be that guy. I’d credit a lot of the steps I’m taking to be a leader to Witt. It was great.”
It was also necessary, which Prescott knew well before that conversation. With the departures of Witten, Bryant and others, the Cowboys were left with just three players on the roster over 30—linebacker Sean Lee, kicker Dan Bailey and long-snapper LP Ladoucer. Star-studded as it is, the entire offensive line is 27 or younger. Elliott’s only 23. And as Prescott said, Witten cast a long shadow as a leader.
Just the same, it wasn’t unnatural. There was no question that Prescott was capable of taking charge, a belief Jason Garrett and the staff had going back to intel they got in the spring of 2016 from Mullen’s staff, and one that was solidified in the Dallas locker room right away after Tony Romo got hurt that August. Garrett always had Romo address the offense before games, and he had no problem plugging Prescott in to do that.
“Saturday night, his first game, he stepped up there and talked for about five, 10 minutes and it was as smooth as can be, as confident as can be, and guys realized he was for real,” All-Pro guard Zack Martin said. “Rookie, Week 1, opening with the Giants on Sunday Night Football, it was like he had been doing it for 10 years. He’s just got it. I don’t really know what ‘it’ is, but he’s got that ‘it’ factor as a quarterback.”
This offseason, though, he realized he had to get to a point where he’d be a little more vocal in the room, a little more willing to tell teammates truths that might not be so comfortable—an approach that, after talking to Witten and thinking on it, he believes may have helped last year.
“We went 9-7. A lot of teams would pay to go 9-7 and be one game out of the playoffs, but it was a sh---y year for us,” he said. “The way things went down, there were things we could’ve fixed as leaders on and off the field. And going into Year 3, I’ve just said to myself, ‘I’m gonna do everything the right way.’ If I see something I don’t like, I’m gonna say something about it. If it causes conflict, well, it causes conflict.”
That brings us back to his play, and Prescott knows that walking the walk remains the most vital piece of talking the kind of talk he’s planning to come the season. So he took me through two examples of what precipitated a year-over-year drop in passer rating (104.9 to 86.6), TD-INT differential (23-4 to 22-13), completion percentage (67.8 to 62.9) and yards per attempt last year (8.0 to 6.9).
- On a third down in the second quarter against the Eagles on Nov. 17, Prescott was pressured, and rather than play it safe and take the sack or throw it away, he threw the ball up to Bryant, who broke deep on a double move. In his words, all it took “was a fair catch” for corner Ronald Darby, so much so that, if you watch the play, Malcolm Jenkins could’ve picked it off too.
- Against the Chargers the next week, down 22-6 in the fourth quarter, and on a first down in the red zone, Prescott took the snap and had room to scramble right. Instead, he turned to his left and threw against his body to Cole Beasley. Without his body behind throw, he didn’t quite get everything on it. Desmond King picked it off, and went 90 yards for the game-sealing pick-six.
On the former play, Prescott failed to cut his losses. On the latter, he declined to take what was there. On both, devastating blows were delivered by the opponent, when the quarterback could have lived to see another throw. That Prescott is so up front about what he did wrong on those plays is part of why, when you watch the Cowboys in camp, you might not see anything that jumps off the practice field about the quarterback.
In his words, this summer’s been for focusing on “basics,” emphasizing going through his reads, and making the right play, even if it’s not the big one: “Trying to get there faster … Is it there? … Do I want it? … Boom, boom, boom, boom.” And his teammates can see the work he’s doing, too, which is part of why everyone here sees him as having such rare ability to lead.
“That’s just who he is,” Garrett says. “He just has an amazing way of coming to work everyday with just an incredible spirit—‘We’ve had success, OK, here we go, that’s behind us, we gotta keep going to the next one.’ And similarily, if things don’t go well, he’s very accountable—‘I didn’t do a good job, I should’ve made that throw. I’ve got to play better.’
“He’s a great example for me as a coach, and a great example to his teammates, about how to go about it. The approach he takes is remarkably good. It’s beyond his years. He’s really an impressive guy, and we’re lucky to have him as our leader.”
Will Prescott rebound, and make up for the big-name losses, with Elliott, that line and a new defensive core around him? I don’t know. But one thing that’s obvious here is that coaches and teammates are behind him, and it’s just as obvious why— because he’s behind them, and accountable to them too. It showed again when I asked if, with the old guard mostly gone, he feels a heightened sense of responsibility.
“I definitely feel a responsibility, playing the quarterback position, ever since I was moved to the position in middle school,” Prescott said. “I’ve always felt like there’s responsibility that comes with being the quarterback. You’re the face of the team. You’re the leader of the team. And a lot of the time, wins and losses depend on what you do. Of course, there’s a responsibility level there. “
And he’s certainly embraced it.
