How Did Dak Prescott Become Immune To Slander?
Being the quarterback of a National Football League team can come with a lot of perks. It can also come with a lot of responsibility as well. For many, the entire outcome of a game can be pinned on the quarterback, no matter how he performs.
We’ve seen great quarterbacks lead their team with amazing performances, but the team falls just shorty, and they get pinned with the blame. Remember when Dallas Cowboys legend Tony Romo threw for over 500 yards against the Denver Broncos, yet still got blamed with the loss?
That’s been the case for many quarterbacks over the course of time. For one quarterback though, he seems to have found himself entirely immune from receiving any blame at all, no matter how poorly he plays, and that man is Dakota Rayne Prescott.
Dak Prescott joined the Dallas Cowboys back in 2016, after being drafted in the fourth round. Prescott wasn’t supposed to be anymore than just depth for the Cowboys, being they still had Tony Romo and even had backup Kellen Moore in front of him.
Then Moore went down with an injury, and suddenly it was just him and Romo. Then, the unthinkable happened and Romo went down in the “dress rehearsal” game in Week 3 of the preseason, and before you know it, the fourth round pick was the face of the franchise.
Expectations were low for Prescott, just drive the bus and keep us in decent shape so Romo can steer the ship home when he gets back. What Presscot proceeded to do was nothing short of spectacular, going 13-3 and doing so efficiently.
Prescott threw 23 touchdown passes while throwing just four interceptions, looking like as good of a bus driver as there was. He was also able to do something Romo couldn’t, run. Prescott had 282 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns, giving him a total of 30 touchdowns on the season.
Sure, he had nine fumbles, which was less than ideal, but the team was rolling and that’s all that mattered.
What happened next was unfortunate. While many of us thought Romo deserved the right to have the team back once he returned from injury, management decided the team was simply playing too well to make that big of a change.
Dallas got to the playoffs and lost in their first game, despite receiving a bye in the opening round. Prescott played well, throwing for 300 yards and three touchdowns, but it wasn’t enough to get the win, despite them being the favorite.
Since then, Dak Prescott has played in just three more postseason games, winning only one of them to a record of 1-3. Despite his lack of postseason success, the Cowboys star quarterback has achieved something very rare in the world of sports. He has arrived at a place of total immunity from the fan base.
Perhaps fans feel bad for the awful treatment they gave Romo. Perhaps they now realize that games are in fact won and lost by the team as a whole and not just the quarterback.
Why Prescott though? Is Prescott a clear cut elite quarterback? Is he so much better than anybody else in the league that we shouldn’t criticize him when he underperforms?
He’s underperformed enough times that you would think eventually people would change their mind, but they haven’t. Prescott has even led the league in fumbles twice, coughing the ball up 12 times in 2018, before topping that number with 14 fumbles in 2021.
Prescott missed five weeks this season, and still finds himself almost leading the league in interceptions this season, trailing only players who have 200 or more pass attempts than him. Yet, it’s never his fault, or not according to the fan base anyway.
“His receivers can’t catch the football,” they claim. Which isn’t true, Dallas is in the bottom 10 of the entire league in dropped passes. They quite literally drop the ball less often than only 10 teams in the league.
So why do fans refuse to hold Dak accountable? It would be one thing if he had led them to a championship after almost three decades of waiting. But he hasn’t, again like we mentioned, he’s only won ONE playoff game in seven years.
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Another player who receives similar love from his fans is the younger Joe Burrow from the Cincinnati Bengals. There is a big difference in the two players however.
Cincinnati isn’t considered to be one of the premiere franchises in the league. Hell, before Burrow, the Bengals hadn’t won a playoff game since 1990.
Burrow was able to change that in just his second season in the league, and that was after playing just 10 games his rookie season before getting injured. In his first full season Burrow was spectacular, leading the league with a 70.4 completion %, along with leading the league in yards per attempt.
This was behind the worst offensive line in football, taking what was also a league-high 51 sacks and losing 370 total sack yards. Despite that, Burrow not only won them their first playoff game since 1990, he turned around and did it again, taking them to the AFC Championship game.
Once he was there, it looked like this may be where their season came to an end. There were, after all, facing Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Burrow and the Bengals found themselves trailing 21-10 at the end of the first half, and it looked like the magical run was over. But it wasn’t. Burrow led his team to a comeback win, sending them to the Super Bowl, again, in just his first full season.
It’s easy to understand why a fan base would blindly support that kind of player. After three full decades of no playoff wins, he comes in and suddenly you’re Super Bowl Bound.
He won more playoff games in a month than Prescott had won in seven years. Hell, he played in as many playoff games in one month as Prescott has played in seven years.
So why do fans continue to so blindly support Prescott? That, I will never know. It could be that they’ve gotten so used to being miserable, they’re afraid of what will happen if they ever know happiness, and they know they’ll never have to find out with him at the helm.
It could be, as I mentioned earlier, they finally realized how awful they were to Romo and are trying to make amends. Either way, it doesn’t look like we’ll be finding out anytime soon.
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Now that’s not to say that Dak Prescott is entirely to blame. Both head coach Mike McCarthy and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore are to blame for most of the Cowboys woes.
The receiving core we spoke about also should share some of the blame, though it’s harder to blame them. Fans blamed Noah Brown for last week’s interception, and rightfully so, the ball did hit him in the hands.
What fans are leaving out from that conversation, is Brown also had six catches and two touchdowns in Sunday’s game. Coming from a former seventh round pick who makes just $1.03 million this season, I would say a two-touchdown performance is more than what you can ask from him.
Last season Prescott had more weapons. He had four-time Pro Bowler Amari Cooper, who’s coming up on 1,000 receiving yards and seven touchdowns this season.
He also had breakout talent Cedrick Wilson, who played well enough to earn himself a $22 million deal over three years. Having Cooper and Wilson would make a huge difference on this team, but when you’re paying your quarterback $30 million it’s tough to pay the price for top level talent around them.
Prescott deserves credit for a lot of things, and nobody is shy about giving it to him. But when a player gets a huge deal, it’s also fair to hold them to a higher standard. I’m not saying Prescott is the route of all of Dallas’ problems, that’s hardly the case, but when did it become unfair to hold him accountable for ANY of his mistakes?
If Prescott continues to play the way he’s been playing, soon he will lead the league in interceptions, despite missing over a quarter of the season. Even more so, they will once again find themselves eliminated from the playoffs by a lesser team, yet once again, the fans will come out in droves to defend their sweet prince.
Here recently, I’ve had a revelation. Much like Taylor Swift, I’ve realized, it’s me, I’m the problem.
Rather than hate Prescott for the treatment he receives, I think we should admire it. We all should be so lucky to consistently let people down and still be loved for it.
Here’s to you Dak. I don’t know what sorcery you cast on the city of Dallas, but I can only hope one day, I get that same treatment.
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