NFL MVP Dak Prescott? Time for Cowboys QB to stake his claim،
FRISCO, Texas — Dak Prescott sat at his locker Sunday, holding casual conversations with a handful of reporters and talking about becoming a father for the first time, the storylines of “Game of Thrones” and “The Good Doctor.”
In Prescott’s hands, he held an iPad that played the Seattle Seahawks’ most recent game against the San Francisco 49ers, rewinding and fast-forwarding play after play of their defense, picking out small details to review again and again.
As Prescott enters Thursday’s game against Seattle at AT&T Stadium (8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video), he’s coming off a stretch of performances unlike any other in his career.
“I’ll tell you how I feel, the confidence I have in this group, in myself; ‘zone,’ I guess you could call it,” Prescott said recently.
As December approaches, Prescott has an opportunity to make his case to become the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. The Cowboys’ next five games will be against teams with real playoff or Super Bowl hopes. After the Cowboys host the Seahawks on Thursday night, the Philadelphia Eagles will travel to AT&T Stadium on December 10. This will be followed by road games against the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins before a short week to prepare to face the Detroit Lions at home on December 30. .
Over his last six games, Prescott has totaled 1,874 yards and completed 72.3% of his passes with 18 touchdown passes and two interceptions.
If Prescott can maintain this level of play – and the Cowboys continue to win – then he could do something only Emmitt Smith has done in franchise history by winning the MVP award. Smith won the MVP in 1993 when he led the league in rushing despite missing two games during a contract dispute. The Cowboys lost both games without Smith, proving his worth.
Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy coached the Green Bay Packers for two of Aaron Rodgers’ four MVP seasons.
“I mean Aaron’s had a number of streaks, and MVP seasons, and all that,” McCarthy said, “but yeah, it definitely has that kind of feeling.”
Cooper Rush has been Prescott’s backup since 2017 and has a unique perspective.
“About as good as a quarterback,” Rush said. “It’s the best I’ve seen him play.”
And it all started from the lowest point of the season, a 42-10 loss to the 49ers on October 8. Prescott threw for 153 yards and was intercepted three times.
It brought laughter to those who believe Prescott will never reach the heights of a Super Bowl quarterback, but it was followed by a run that silenced the naysayers except those who want to quibble with the Cowboys’ opponents in this sequence.
Yes, the Cowboys haven’t beaten a team with a winning record, but during their current 5-1 streak, they’ve handed four of those opponents their worst or second-worst losses of the season. In the Cowboys’ 28-23 loss to the Eagles (now 10-1) on November 5, Prescott threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns. Only Washington’s Sam Howell (397 yards, four touchdowns) has passed for more against Philadelphia this season. Prescott had more yards against the Eagles than Buffalo’s Josh Allen, Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa.
According to ESPN BET, he has the fourth-best odds to win the award behind Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson and Mahomes.
“It means I’m playing well,” Prescott said of his name being tied to the MVP talk. “It’s as simple as that. I’m about to achieve a goal – and it’s an important goal for the team – and I know that if my name is there, it means we’re playing well. C “so it’s great. But at the end of the day, we’re just trying to build. I mean, for the eight years we’ve been in this thing, it’s about building and building, and making sure that we get better more and more every week, and that we get hot when we need to.”
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Rodgers tells McAfee that Dak is one of his favorite QBs to watch
Aaron Rodgers joins Pat McAfee to explain why he loved watching Dak Prescott play this season.
Prescott is hot right now.
Only Tony Romo (19 in 2007) threw more touchdown passes than Prescott had 18 in six games during the same season in team history. Don Meredith had 20 touchdown passes during a six-game streak that spanned the 1965 and 1966 seasons. Prescott’s performance on Thanksgiving against the Washington Commanders marked the 10th four-touchdown game of his career, tying the club brand established by Romo.
Yet for Prescott, every week is like walking a tightrope, and he knows one misstep will bring back the laughs. Criticism is nothing new for Cowboys quarterbacks, from Meredith to Roger Staubach to Troy Aikman to Romo.
Aikman was booed after winning three Super Bowls while attending a Dallas Mavericks game in 1997. This also happened at other times, as the Cowboys went from being Super Bowl winners to that of non-elimination contenders at the end of his career.
Romo went from ordinary hero to overrated despite becoming the franchise leader in passing and touchdown passes because he couldn’t advance past the divisional round.
Prescott was once a fan. After the Cowboys lost a game-winning, playoff-bound game to Washington in 2012, a frustrated Prescott, then at Mississippi State, spoke out on Twitter:
“I’m done taking care of Romo. #hadenough”
They were teammates four seasons later.
“That’s why I say, ‘I understand the fans,’” Prescott said. “I understand when fans are upset. I get it. I was there once.”
Fan reviews are one thing. Media reviews are another, although some of them sound like a WWE track used for clicks and ratings.
“Some things, I’ve said many times, he faces so much criticism it’s insane,” wide receiver CeeDee Lamb said. “He’s having a bad game. Oh, my God, it’s all kinds of things. It’s upsetting. I get it, and I’m not just saying that because he’s my teammate, [but] as a person in general, he needs to put his phone down. He’ll have to lock his phone at some point. Nobody wants to see that all day. But at the end of the day, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and Dak does a great job of blocking it out and being the player he is. So far he’s crushed it. »
If he continues to crush it, the MVP narrative will grow and he can reset the narrative that he doesn’t perform well in big games. And even that might be temporary. He might not be completely reset until he wins a Super Bowl or, at the very least, takes the Cowboys to the NFC Championship Game.
Prescott understands.
“The challenge is just to stay true to that process, to not move forward, not to get overwhelmed, to understand that what I’m telling myself is, ‘I didn’t do anything stupid,’ you know. what I mean ?” he said. “In the regular season, the numbers are great – getting wins is what’s most important. But at the end of the day, we’re trying to stack up and continue to grow this team to get better every week.”
