The way the season ended for the Dallas Cowboys wasn’t unexpected. They won a Monday night playoff game then traveled to San Francisco for their fourth straight road trip and fell to a 49ers team home for 21 days and boasted just as dominant a defense as the Cowboys.
The 49ers held 11 of their 17 regular-season opponents at 17 points or less, and did the same to a Cowboys’ team that lost one of their two dominant offensive weapons less than halfway through the game. San Francisco led the league in interceptions with 20 in 2022, had one more in their win over Seattle and then picked off Cowboys QB Dak Prescott twice. In a vacuum, the 19-12 loss would never be seen as a referendum on Prescott, but that’s not how things work for him or the team he plays for.
Prescott’s league-leading 15 interceptions in just 12 games played certainly creates a baseline narrative. And while many pay lip service to understanding not all interceptions are created equal nor are all picks the QB’s fault, the reality is most NFL fans are built to box-score scout and therefore anecdotal evidence is extrapolated.
In the same vein it’s nearly impossible to convince casual fans that sacks are great, big-impact plays, but don’t account for the true worth of an edge rusher, it’s a hard, uphill fight to convince them a QB’s worth can’t be boiled down to what happens on less than 4% of the throws he makes.