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By Bob Sturm Sep 10, 2019
What a performance to open up the 2019 NFL season. The Cowboys were able to put up such a show in Sunday’s first six drives that the fourth quarter ended up being a waste of time. They had moved on to Week 2.
The Cowboys scored on five consecutive drives; an extremely rare feat for just about any offense, but the Cowboys had not done it since 2014 in Chicago. With over 450 yards of total offense at the end of the third quarter and an average of over nine yards per play, the Kellen Moore offense had arrived in force. Everything the Cowboys tried seemed to work. Every playcall seemed connected and purposeful.
Doing it all after a season when the masses wondered whatever happened to some simple creativity and ingenuity created a true spectacle.
Yesterday, in the Morning After, there was plenty of time spent on Moore himself. I invite you to review that, and I plan to continue to demonstrate all of those points again in the film study below, but I do think we should spend a little time on what might have been the very best performance of Dak Prescott’s career.
In my 22 years, very few Cowboys have been analyzed and scrutinized quite like Prescott (Tony Romo would likely qualify) and there are reasons that we could elaborate on for years. However, I think the nature of the beast and the publicity the Cowboys seem to attract cause Prescott to actually become a bit underrated by his own fanbase, which is generally next to impossible. Around the league, it’s very easy to find homers propping up their teams’ QB beyond any rational explanation to those that watch him play. Yet here in Dallas, it almost seems like he is thought of with less regard than he actually deserves.
I certainly don’t wish to go over that again today, but it is interesting to me how Prescott’s most vocal critics are generally fans of the divisional rivals in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. It should not surprise anyone to know that rivals run down each others’ players, but in this case, Prescott has played his best football against NFC East teams. In fact, as we talked about on Friday, he is now 14-5 in 19 divisional games and has had nine of his 12 biggest passing days inside the division.
DAK PRESCOTT VERSUS THE NFC EAST, 2016-2019