He’s not the best QB in the league, but no players gives you more options.
Cowboys fans did not wake up Monday morning feeling very good about their football team after a frustrating 28-24 loss to the Vikings on Sunday night. But the knowledge that they have one of the very best quarterbacks in the NFL should help soothe that pain.
Even with Cowboys coaches doing everything in their power to blow the game, Dak Prescott was the story of the night. At least he should be. His numbers weren’t overly impressive: He completed 28-of-46 passes (60.9%) for 347 yards, three touchdowns and one pick. On a day where Lamar Jackson put up a perfect passer rating and took a Bengals player’s soul right on the field in a blowout win, what Prescott did might go under-appreciated by the media. That should not be the case. For me, it was the night Dak established himself as one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks.
It was as complete a performance as I’ve seen from a quarterback since … well, maybe ever. There were highlight-reel throws downfield, shrewd pre-snap checks and protection changes, plays that required Prescott to exhaust his progressions while avoiding hits in the pocket and plenty examples of his ability to create outside of structure when a play breaks down. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say there are only two or three quarterbacks in the league capable of putting together such a comprehensive display of quarterbacking. It was an elite performance, which should not come as a shock since Prescott has been playing at an elite level all season — and for the majority of his short career.
That may sound reactionary, but Prescott has now played about three-and-a-half seasons in the NFL. He was an MVP candidate after an amazing rookie campaign. Things didn’t change over the first half of his sophomore season until his supporting cast was hit hard by injuries and a suspension to Ezekiel Elliott. Prescott was still playing well but his production had fallen off and that continued on into the 2018 season until the Amari Cooper trade reinvigorated the Cowboys offense. Since that move, Dallas has gotten MVP-level production from its quarterback.
So were talking about a 40-game sample size of Dak playing like an elite quarterback, including this entire season where he’s led the Cowboys to the league’s best offense, per Football Outsiders DVOA. He’s also leading the league in Ben Baldwin’s DAKOTA metric, which combines Expected Points Added and Completion Percentage over Expectation into one composite stat. He trails Russell Wilson in ESPN’s QBR by 0.1 points — and there’s a decent chance he ends the week on top with the Seahawks taking on one the league’s best pass defenses, the 49ers, on Monday night.
Prescott’s name is being left out of the MVP discussion because we’re still fixated on QB WINZ in 2019 and the Cowboys are sitting at 5-4 after the loss to Minnesota. It doesn’t help that there are still people out there who believe Ezekiel Elliott is the most important player on the offense and that the offensive line is still the dominant unit we last saw in 2016.
Last night’s performance should have convinced most people that none of those factors can reasonably be used to argue that Dak isn’t worthy of consideration for the MVP award. Let’s address them one-by-one…
- Prescott’s QBR for the night was 85.0. ESPN’s stat is designed to give you a rough estimate of how often you can expect a team to win based on the quarterback’s performance. So Prescott’s performance was good enough to win 85% of games. The loss — like most of Dallas’ losses this season — was not on him.
- This may have been Elliott’s worst game of the season. On 20 plays, Elliott produced an average EPA of -0.36. That means the Cowboys lost about 7.2 points on his touches alone. In a game decided by four points, that was the difference. Meanwhile, Prescott’s 48 plays added 27.36 points on Sunday night. The Cowboys scored 24 points.
- Prescott finished the night with the highest average time to throw of Week 10, per Next Gen Stats. The offensive line did its part, sure, but the quarterback did a lot of the work. Prescott was tinkering with the protections all night and navigated the pocket to avoid pressure. He bought himself all that time and capitalized on it when it was available. That’s a big accomplishment against a Mike Zimmer-coached defense.
Prescott was brilliant all night but two throws stood out to me above the rest. Both were gorgeous dimes that would have dropped jaws on their own, but it was the process leading up to the throws that were most impressive. The first was Dak’s fadeaway touchdown pass to Randall Cobb on a free play.
The throw is fit into the tightest of windows. That’s not an exaggeration. It was literally the tightest window we’ve seen on a touchdown pass all season.
But that play doesn’t happen if Prescott doesn’t call an audible before the ball is snapped. The Vikings are sending a six-man pressure, and Dak checks into the perfect play to beat it. I mean, this play has all of the characteristics of the ones we typically see from Canton-bound quarterbacks. You have the Manning-style change at the line of scrimmage. The Rodgers-esque awareness after the Vikings player jumps offsides. And then Brees-level precision on the throw. That is elite quarterback play.
That wasn’t even my favorite Dak play of the night. That distinction goes to this impossible throw to Cooper on third-and-12.
The Cowboys line holds up against the Vikings rush but, like Tom Brady, Prescott has to climb the pocket while looking for an open receiver. Cooper, who is tightly guarded, will have to do and Prescott lofts a perfectly-placed pass to his receiver for a first down. I still can’t believe he made that throw.
Prescott has been putting this high-level play on film all season and, yet, he still isn’t getting enough credit for developing into a complete quarterback. He’s not the best quarterback in the league, but I don’t know if there’s another one who opens up a playbook quite like he does. Prescott is accurate, poised in the pocket and comfortable outside of it, he’s got a strong arm that allows him to make any throw and he has total command of the Cowboys offense — before and after the snap. The Cowboys have never fully committed to it, but Prescott is also a factor in the run game when used on option plays.
There’s nothing you CAN’T do with Prescott behind center.
For whatever reason, the Cowboys have let him get to this deep into the final year of his rookie contract. That’s looking like a bigger and more costly mistake by the week. Many people — including myself — scoffed at Prescott’s reported contract demands of around $30 million a season. Now he’s the one doing the scoffing because that price just keeps going up, and Cowboys fans should be happy when Jerry Jones finally decides to pay it. There’s no such thing as overpaying for an elite quarterback.
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