The Cowboys’ Dak Prescott declined an invitation to the Pro Bowl so he could finally, after 16 months of nonstop rehab for a trio of injuries- not to mention a full regular season of football- get in a small bit of rest before starting his prep for the team’s 2022 campaign.
NFL quarterbacks have to be uniquely in tune with an internal clock in their heads, the one that tells them when a blitz is closing in, when the pocket is collapsing, when his receivers are about to be open, when to throw, when to hit the deck, when the play is no longer salvageable.
In the case of Prescott, who’ll turn 29 in July, his clock may be telling him he’s running out of time on leading the Cowboys to a Super Bowl.
ESPN’s Todd Archer points out that, in the last 42 years, only three quarterbacks have made it to their first Super Bowl with their original team after a longer run as the every-game starter. Ken Anderson took the Bengals to Super Bowl XVI in his 10th season with the club. Peyton Manning and Matt Ryan were in their ninth year as starters when they led the Colts and Falcons to Super Bowls XLI and LI, respectively.
Prescott will be entering his seventh season as the starter in Dallas.
The work he puts in between now and training camp, though, is all on him. Prescott asked Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy during the team’s exit interviews last month about the offseason quarterback program McCarthy used to run in Green Bay. McCarthy isn’t allowed to run the same kind of sessions now under the league’s current collective bargaining agreement, but Prescott says he plans to take a version of McCarthy’s “quarterback school” to his personal coach, John Beck of 3DQB.
“I can go simulate that, in a sense, in my way of training,” Prescott told USA TODAY Sports. “Knowing the drills we’ve done all year long in quarterback and individuals [work in practice], and just taking those now and going out and working with John or other quarterbacks. When the coaches aren’t around, coaching myself and the other guys and being hard on myself as if it was the quarterback school.”
A former quarterback with four NFL squads and now a specialist who works privately with several of the league’s passers, Beck was the man behind Prescott’s pregame warmup routine that went viral for a time. The work he did with Prescott on his mechanics seemed to significantly improve Prescott’s game.
But Prescott lost access to Beck during the 2021 season, right when he could have used that extra coaching the most.
Due to a strained calf he suffered two weeks earlier, Prescott was forced to miss the Oct. 31 game versus Minnesota. That same day, Beck appeared on the New York Jets’ sideline for their game against Cincinnati; the Jets had just hired him on a full-time basis for the remainder of the season to help mentor Zach Wilson.
Prescott’s much-debated “slump” began the next week during the Cowboys’ blowout loss to Denver.
He continued to work with Beck’s 3DQB partner, but he downplayed the significance of losing the California-based Beck as a tutor.
“The in-season is not that important, I guess you can say, as much as the offseason is,” Prescott said during the season. “But yeah, I look forward to getting back to him [when] the offseason happens.”
Beck will reportedly not return to the Jets in 2022. He’s once again available to put Prescott through the paces, often at the turf field he had constructed in his own backyard, where he sometimes arranges for teammates to visit for unofficial practice sessions.
And even though the coming weeks will inevitably bring some change to the Cowboys in the way of coaches and players coming and going, Prescott is optimistic about building on the foundation of last year’s 12-5 season.
“This is the first year I could say in my time that this much has stayed the same, this much continuity,” Prescott said. “We had a lot of carryover in coaches and staff. Obviously, we’ll lose some players, but just the young guys and what we’ve built, this thing does roll over one year from another when you have the culture that we do. It’s going to be exciting next year. Looking forward to having a full offseason of just growth and work, obviously coming into it healthy- or healthy for the most part. It’s going to be huge. I’m excited for it.”
The regular season is still 203 days away. But the Cowboys quarterback has already switched to hurry-up mode.
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