Anchored to a truly despicable offensive game plan against the Falcons in Week 9, with just two throws that traveled 10 yards or more in the air in 24 attempts, Dak Prescott threw for just 133 yards. Then he was on the sideline with a hamstring injury it appeared he aggravated on a throw outside the numbers. Then he was caught on camera saying, “We [expletive] suck.” Then he was ruled out. Then he was gone, perhaps to injured reserve and sidelined for at least the next four games, which include three teams with records well above .500. Or perhaps for the rest of the season.
Whether or not Prescott returns, by the time December rolls around, there most likely won’t be a season to save given the talent at the top of the NFC East and across the rest of the conference. Given glaring flaws all over the roster, perhaps this was inevitable even if Prescott were playing. And he shoulders his share of blame for Dallas’ 3-5 start, too. Prescott’s numbers were in freefall. He had been picked off eight times—one fewer than he threw in 17 regular-season games last year—and his adjusted yards per attempt plummeted from 8.19 to 6.43. With a 64.7 percent completion rate, he is on track for his lowest mark since his second NFL season, in 2017.
But underwhelming as Prescott has been this season, it is easy to say the Cowboys failed him, too. The offense has declined across the board in every area. From line to play to receiver play to rushing to coaching, everyone has a hand in Prescott’s declining numbers. Let’s look at the things that Dallas did really well in 2023 and look at why those things have declined so precipitously.
The line has invited more pressure and more coverage defenders
Last season, Prescott was sixth among qualified quarterbacks in passing DVOA when facing a blitz, at 21.0 percent. Per FTN StatHub, he faced a blitz 159 times. This year the blitz rate is well down at 58 tries in eight games, an average of about 1.5 fewer blitzes faced per game.
Why aren’t defenses blitzing? Because they don’t have to. Prescott has been very good by NFL quarterback standards when pressured. His minus-35.7 percent DVOA when pressured last year was best in the NFL. He faced pressure on 121 attempts in 2023. Over almost eight games in 2024, he has already faced pressure 82 times. That’s about an extra three pressures per game.
Prescott has done fairly well against that pressure, with a minus-50.9 percent DVOA, which ranks eighth in the league. But when you are pressured as often as he is—when the Atlanta Falcons, they of the six sacks in their first eight games, produce three against you—it creates negative plays this offense can’t withstand.
This, to me, is the main culprit behind Prescott’s season. Tyler Guyton and Cooper Beebe were thrown into the fire before they were ready at perhaps the two most pivotal positions on the line, Zack Martin is getting long in the tooth, and Terence Steele is below-average. Teams are getting Prescott into pressures easier than they ever have, and those plays are almost always the most damaging pass plays an offense can have.
The receiving corps can’t produce in man coverage and can’t win deep
Prescott had a 23.6 percent DVOA against man coverage last year, eighth-best among qualifying quarterbacks. This year, his DVOA against man coverage is minus-13.6 percent, which ranks 27th. To contextualize, Prescott plays a little worse on average than Mason Rudolph (minus-12.1 percent DVOA) when a defense employs man coverage. Dak Prescott is the NFL’s highest-paid quarterback. Mason Rudolph has started 16 NFL games in seven seasons.
How? Let’s simplify things a little bit. Defenses use two main coverages that have a single-high safety in the NFL: Cover-1 and Cover-3. Cover-3 drops the cornerbacks into a deep zone at the snap, while in Cover-1 the corners play man coverage and follow receivers over the middle. When Prescott faced a Cover-1 or Cover-3 look last year, he had the highest DVOA in the NFL, at 40.4 percent.
In 2024, he has a minus-21.1 percent DVOA against those coverages, 29th in the NFL. The main reason to run a Cover-3 is to put more men near the box to help defend the run, but because Mike McCarthy’s offense feeds everything short, both of these coverages feast against pretty much everything Dallas does.
In his first year with the Cowboys, wideout Brandin Cooks was, I would say, not great. But he gave you something in route-running and savvy that the younger Cowboys receivers simply haven’t, even if he wasn’t beating anybody deep anymore.
So with Prescott and CeeDee Lamb occasionally looking off in their timing, in some games, Prescott had nobody reliable to go to. When Lamb and Prescott are on the same page, that works to an extent. But aside from Jalen Tolbert’s heroics against the Steelers, the other wideouts have contributed little. Maybe newly acquired Johnathan Mingo will be the guy who changes things this year, but a) nothing we saw in Carolina suggests this is likely and b) Dak’s not playing with him until at least December anyway.
Factor all of this in, and it has been almost impossible for the Cowboys to throw deep. In 2023, Prescott had a 117 percent DVOA on deep attempts, fifth-best in the NFL. In 2024, that number is 15.5 percent, which is 29th among qualified quarterbacks.
How do you get a number that bad? Some of it is the 14 passes that have been defended. Some of it is the fact that only 10 of Prescott’s 51 deep attempts were considered “open” by FTN’s charting as compared to 36 of them being in “tight” coverage. That’s the third-highest total in the league. It speaks to the receiver quality, the forced quicker release due to more pressure, and the offensive design combining to smack Prescott down. In all of 2023, only 53 of the 94 passes he attempted were considered “tight” coverage.
Yes, he’s thrown some picks … but they weren’t all on him.
There’s no denying that some of Prescott’s interceptions have been ugly, but some of them are about his supporting cast, not to mention having to repeatedly play from behind.
On his first interception of the season, Jalen Brooks tripped on a slant, and the ball fell into the arms of Paulson Adebo. Against Pittsburgh, Lamb appeared to have no idea the ball was coming his way as the Cowboys went hurry-up. Against the Lions, Tolbert ran a toothless flat route, enabling Brian Branch to undercut Prescott. Receiver talent. Miscommunication. Scheme. Prescott has mixed in some trying-to-do-too-much interceptions as well, but more than half of his picks can be traced to the ecosystem around him.
In sum, what has happened to Prescott this season is less about his own issues and more about the fact that he is fighting a powerful current of offensive woes. If he were one of the best quarterbacks ever instead of merely a really good quarterback, perhaps he could have overcome some of these issues and kept the offense afloat.
But Dak Prescott will never be in that strata, which puts him right alongside the rest of the game’s third-to-10th-best quarterbacks: dependent on their organizations to deliver a supporting cast that enables them to flourish. This is an ask too big for Dallas in 2024, and it will remain one as the punditry try to will the Cowboys into a narrative next step they’ll never take.
Being the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback is never a fair job. It’s been a while since it was this unfair.
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