It was the faintest of smiles.
As he was told that he had just become the first player in National Football League history to rush for three touchdowns and throw for over 400 yards in the same game, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott could be seen taking the briefest of moments for a personal reaction. Then he composed himself, locked back in on the job at hand.
And then he deflected the praise onto his teammates.
Prescott went 34-of-47 during Sunday’s Week 2 matchup against Atlanta, ending up with 450 yards and a touchdown through the air. On the ground, three of his five recorded carries put him in the end zone. It was a first-of-its-kind performance that catapulted Dallas to a miraculous 40-39 comeback victory.
But as he learned of his history-making effort during his postgame press conference, Prescott was quick to label Sunday’s improbable win as a total group effort.
“Those are just statistics,” Prescott told reporters on the call. “Those touchdowns were all, what, less than three yards or so? So credit the offensive line. Two were quarterback sneaks that allowed me to get in. Let’s credit these receivers. They went out there and continued to get open. Sure, I had to find them and make some plays here and there, but that was a team win all the way around. I think my stats today just show that.”
Prescott didn’t mention that his stats came behind a makeshift offensive line with backups starting at both tackle spots. The inexperience showed early in a disastrous first quarter that saw the Cowboys fumble four times in the first quarter en route to a 20-0 deficit before the teams even changed direction at AT&T Stadium.
It was then that Prescott and the Dallas offense huddled together on the sideline and attempted to regroup.
“We just had to lock in,” Prescott said later of the impromptu pep talk, led by running back Ezekiel Elliott and running backs coach Skip Peete. “I credit Zeke and I credit Coach Peete right there. Simple as that, just getting the group together and saying, ‘The worst of the worst has happened. I don’t know if it can get any worse than the way we started off. But the future’s always better than the past. Just focus in on our job, do our one-eleventh, don’t do too much more, don’t do any less than that, and it’ll all come together.'”
Come together, it did. It took every single second of the remaining three quarters and a few lucky breaks along the way, but the Cowboys found a way to eke out a one-point win as time expired. It will go down as one of the franchise’s most thrilling victories, unbelievably following one of the worst starts ever put on a field.
“It happens every once in a while,” added wide receiver Amari Cooper. “Around the league, in college football, high school. You see these things. And that’s what gives you the confidence that you can do it when you’re down 20 points in a football game.”
“You’re never out of the fight,” linebacker Jaylon Smith told the media. “This league is won at the last minute, at the last second a lot of the times in these games that we play. You’ve got to fight to the finish. And that’s what we did.”
“We weren’t supposed to win that game,” Elliott said afterward. “But it’s a testament to the type of guys we have in this locker room.”
But it’s also a testament to the coach standing in front of that locker room. It’s difficult to imagine this same bunch pulling off such an enormous rally under Jason Garrett. The team’s 16 points in the final five minutes required the kind of play-calling and decision-making that Mike McCarthy was hired for, even if it was head-scratchingly bewildering at times in the moment.
But it turns out that McCarthy didn’t even light a fire at halftime. With the Cowboys down by 19 points, he didn’t address the Xs and Os of trying to win the game. He spoke about something bigger.
“At halftime, we talked about having this opportunity as a new team. We needed this opportunity,” McCarthy said, “to move forward and find out about one another. We’ll see what everybody has here. It’s a new team, it’s a new journey. And I’ll tell you what, our players delivered big-time.”
A notch in the win column- the team’s first under McCarthy- was important. But the Cowboys may have gotten something out of their never-say-die performance that will have much longer-lasting implications.
“You look at any great season that you’re able to put together, you have big moments that you’re able to build off of,” McCarthy explained. “This is a big moment to build off of. But the fact of the matter is, we’re 1-and-1. We understand that. We want to make sure we establish home-field dominance. To come back and get that done today was outstanding.”
Prescott similarly gave a ten-gallon hat tip to the 21,708 fans in attendance at Sunday’s game as he talked about the team’s refusal to fold.
“We showed our resiliency today,” Prescott said. “I don’t know if I’ve been in many games like this. The only thing I can think of is the playoff game my rookie year. But to be able to get the win and feeling those fans that were there and stayed the whole game that didn’t give up on us, that was a huge difference. I think the team fed off of that. I know they did late in that two-minute drive after that onside kick. That was just incredible. Incredible game to be a part of. But I think the team, more than anything, just showed their faith and resiliency in each other, just staying at it.”
The game featured so many jaw-dropping moments that it’s easy to look past Prescott’s monster numbers. And Prescott’s historic statline makes it easy to forget that he actually spent time in the blue tent being checked for a concussion after a big hit late in the third quarter.
Backup Andy Dalton entered the contest with the Cowboys on the one-yard line. With no open targets on the ensuing play, Dalton threw the ball away. Prescott returned to action and ended up scoring the second of his three rushing touchdowns of the afternoon.
“Huge performance,” McCarthy said of his starter. “Obviously, he bounced back from just the one play of being out. Just so steady. It’s tough on a quarterback, particularly when you get in a hole like that. But I thought he was strong in the pocket, I thought he was smart with the football. Just so composed. He had a very strong performance today.”
And Prescott only got better as the game went on, even as the Falcons scored the next ten points to seemingly put the game out of reach once and for all.
“Just fearless,” Elliott raved about No. 4. “No matter what the score is, Dak always has that same mentality that we’re going to be able to come back and win that game and he’s going to lead us to come back and do that. Just for him to go out there and be as clutch as he was and make the plays he made, him and the receivers, it was special.”
“Like I told him in the locker room right before I came to this interview,” Cooper said, “I told him he showed a lot of resilience today. I told him, ‘Way to keep fighting.’ Really, all of us. We kept fighting. And we were able to pull this thing out.”
But to a man, Prescott, his coach, and his teammates were all quick to put Sunday’s astonishing win in proper perspective, knowing what they were able to find in themselves- and each other- in Week 2 could pay much bigger dividends down the line. The 40-39 win may turn out to be a catalyst of sorts. It may prove to be the moment the 2020 Cowboys were really born.
“It can. It certainly can,” Cooper mused. “We just have to focus on our assignments and go out there and execute the game plan. And we have to start faster, for sure. We definitely have some things to clean up, but this is a great momentum-picker-upper, if you will, for us to do those things.”
“It’s not a sprint,” Smith noted, “it’s a marathon. We want to peak when we need to peak.”
“This is huge,” Prescott told reporters. “Coach McCarthy said it at halftime. ‘We need to be here. We need to be right where we are.’ He said the final score didn’t matter as much as finding out the type of men that we have, the type of fight that we have within this team. To show the resiliency, to go out there and continue to fight, continue at it, and just be able to come out with a win, it does so much.”
“It’s a young season. We’re early in the process of our football team finding out a lot about each other each and every day. This is a big chunk of confidence that we’ll carry forward,” McCarthy explained.
“It’s something we can point to. We found out a lot about ourselves today.”
To be fair, though, Prescott showed something most of Cowboys Nation has already known for some time.
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