Earlier this week, I wrote about Dak Prescott ascending to the NFL’s elite tier of quarterbacks and sent out a tweet asking why he wasn’t being included in the MVP discussion despite leading the NFL in basically every advanced metric.
There was, of course, a lot of positive feedback from Cowboys fans. But mostly everybody else came into my mentions ready for a fight. I saw a lot of the same tired arguments that have been used against Dak since he entered the NFL in 2016, which inspired me to put together this statistical guide to help debunk all of those arguments.
Let’s tackle them one-by-one…
Dak gets to throw against loaded boxes because of the Cowboys run game
I debunked this one in the offseason, but let’s take a look at how many loaded boxes Dak has seen in 2019. The best way to do that is to look at the coverages he’s facing. In order for a defense to drop an extra player into the box (it’s almost always a safety) they have to play with only one safety deep. Or they can drop both safeties in the box and play Cover 0.
In 2019, 49.7% of Dak’s attempts have come against single-high and zero coverages. That ranks 26th in the league! There are 25 teams in the league passing against loaded boxes more often than the Cowboys.
Dak needs play-action and bootlegs to thrive
According to his detractors, Dak can’t operate without a good play-action passing game. What happens when he has to take a traditional drop and make a throw from the pocket? Using Sports Info Solutions’ charting data, we can find an answer. I isolated all of his traditional dropbacks (3-, 5- and 7-step drops) with no play-action that ended with a throw from the pocket, and Dak was still one of the very best passers in the NFL on those plays, ranking third in EPA per attempt and second in success rate.
Dak is a one-read quarterback
I think anyone who has watched Dak play — even going back to his rookie season — can tell you this one is off base. Just watch his last game against the Vikings and there are plenty of examples of him coming off his first read and hitting a receiver deeper in his progression.
But don’t take my word for it. Pro Football Focus tracks how often quarterbacks come off their first read. I don’t have the 2019 numbers on hand, I do have them for 2018. Last season, 65% of his attempts went to his first read. The league average was 66% according to PFF’s QB Annual.
Dak’s supporting cast is great and props him up
This might be the argument you’ll hear most often, and while I will concede that Dak certainly has a good supporting cast, I don’t think it’s one of the league’s best.
The Dallas offensive line is routinely hailed as one of the best in the league, but it’s been inconsistent during Dak’s career, and, heading into Week 11, it ranks 15th in ESPN’s pass block win rate metric. When the offensive line has faltered, Prescott has been among the best quarterbacks in the league anyway. He’s averaging 0.15 EPA per attempt under pressure, which ranks fifth in the league.
The receiving corps has also received praise this season, but only nine teams have dropped more passes than the Cowboys have. Dallas ranks 13th in yards-after-catch and Prescott ranks second in average air yards per completion, so he’s doing a lot of the work. And it’s not like Cowboys receivers are getting open for him; only five starting quarterbacks are throwing into tight windows more often than Prescott is, this season per Next Gen Stats.
Let’s take it one step further: What happens if you take out Dak’s throws to his two biggest weapons, Cooper and Elliott? Not much, it turns out. His average EPA per attempt is still among the league’s best at 0.27.
The Cowboys’ win-loss record is bad and great quarterbacks lead their teams to wins
Ugh, we’re still doing QB WINZ? OK, whatever.
We can all agree that the best way to win a game is to score a lot of points, right? Luckily we have the Expected Points model to help us figure out how many points Dak has added to the Cowboys’ expected point total, and it’s a lot. Prescott ranks second in EPA per play (to Patrick Mahomes), and, thanks to Sports Info Solutions’ Points Earned model, which adjusts EPA so it only accounts for a player’s individual contribution to a play, we can see how Prescott performs without the help of his support cast. Guess what? It’s still damn good. Dak ranks second in Points Earned per pass attempt (to Mahomes again).
What about the losses? Maybe it’s those wins against bad teams that are inflating his numbers, and Dak is failing to lift the Cowboys in those games they lost. That’s certainly a good argument to make … in theory. But it doesn’t hold any water. I ranked every game by a QB in the NFL this season by total Points Earned, and here’s where Prescott’s losses ranked along with the percentile ranking…
Jets: 46th (85th percentile)
Saints: 71st (77th percentile)
Vikings: 87th (76th percentile)
Packers: 139th (56th percentile)
How about ESPN’s QBR, which is designed to give you a rough estimate of how often you can expect a team to win based on the quarterback’s performance. Prescott’s QBR for the season is 85, meaning that based on his performance, the Cowboys would be expected to win 85% of their games. Here’s his QBR in each of Dallas’ losses…
Vikings: 84.9
Saints: 77.5
Jets: 68.4
Packers: 34.1
That’s only one game where Prescott’s performance should have led to a loss!
Dak has thrown a lot of interceptions this season
It’s true. With eight interceptions, Prescott is one of the league leaders in interceptions thrown. But let’s add some context to those picks…
Four of Prescott’s interceptions have come in desperate situations with the Cowboys’ win probability at lower than 17%. That’s when a quarterback has to start taking more chances in order to give his team a chance to win. Those are the least costly interceptions a quarterback can throw. If a quarterback ISN’T throwing interceptions in those situations, it’s most likely a sign that he’s not being aggressive enough and giving his team a chance to make a comeback.
Then, three of his interceptions came in easy wins for the Cowboys (against the Dolphins, Redskins and Giants), so that means they didn’t directly contribute to a loss.
That leaves one interception that directly led to a loss and it came in the Packers game when this pass bounced off Amari Cooper’s hands and into a Green Bay defender’s arms:
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I’m not sure what Prescott has to do to convince people that he’s actually a good quarterback. Maybe there’s nothing he can do. But any way you look at it, Dak has been one of the very best quarterbacks in the league and clearly deserves to be in the MVP discussion. Anybody saying otherwise is just willfully ignoring the facts.