Dak Prescott: Cowboys’ Future that Nearly Wasn’t

Dak Prescott to start for Dallas Cowboys
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It is April 28th, 2016. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones lays in bed, wide-eyed, thoughts racing. Should he have paid whatever it took to trade back into the first round–even if it meant overpaying? Will he now have to watch Paxton Lynch go on to become a star NFL QB on someone else’s team? Will the Cowboys have to wait until the 2017 draft to find the heir to Tony Romo?

Via MMQB’s Peter King, we get a glimpse into the agonizing process that was the Cowboys’ 2016 draft. After having missed out on Paxton Lynch, who went to the Denver Broncos, and Connor Cook, who the Raiders drafted one spot ahead of the Cowboys, many saw Dak Prescott as a consolation prize. He was the Cowboys’ third choice. The guy who was left on the board.

He was seen by many as a project, and in a poll we ran after Day 3 of the draft, Connor Cook was voted as the one who would develop into the better NFL QB. In his NFL.com draft profile, Dak Prescott was described as “a player who must improve his mechanics, poise and quickness through his progressions if he is to become a full­-time starter in the NFL.”

It is hard to believe it was only a few months ago that Jerry Jones was very publicly lamenting having missed out on Paxton Lynch. Then again, it was only a few weeks ago that Cowboys fans were crushed that they were spurned by veteran Nick Foles, who briefly hit the market before signing with the Chiefs. They “NEEDED” a veteran to back up Tony Romo. That was then. Now, Dak Prescott’s nearly flawless performances in the first three weeks of the preseason have all but put to rest that discussion. Things have definitely changed since Jerry’s sleepless post-first round night.

Since then, Prescott has put on unreal performances through three weeks of the preseason, throwing 39-50 for 454 Yds and 5 TDs, and rushing for another 53 Yds and 2 TDs.

The Twitterverse was definitely impressed by his performances.

A landslide 76% of our followers even went so far as to say that they trust Dak Prescott more with the Cowboys’ future than Tony Romo.

In the third preseason game–the “dress rehearsal” for the regular season–he went against the starters of the stifling Seattle defense and showed “mechanics, poise and quickness through his progressions” befitting a full­-time starter in the NFL. Which is more important now than ever, considering the news that Tony Romo has a fractured vertebrae and will likely miss 6-10 weeks.

Dak Prescott has been the unexpected star of the preseason for the Dallas Cowboys. Although it is still only the preseason, Prescott, left waiting until the fourth round of the draft, certainly looks to be the steal of this year’s quarterback class. With Romo out, he will now have a chance to prove himself in the regular season and show Cowboys Nation that they were right to trust him with the future of the team.


















Update: Dug up this gem from back in May. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that 30% of our voters already knew Romo had an assigned seat waiting for him in the rehab room.

(Photo: Getty Images/Stephen Dunn)

One thought on “Dak Prescott: Cowboys’ Future that Nearly Wasn’t”

  1. I recognize that DP has had a good preseason thus far. But that’s just it, it’s PRESEASON. Which means we know basically nothing about how he will perform during the actual season. We’ll see how he plays when defensive coordinators actually scheme against him and he starts seeing more exotic pressures and defenses.

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