Dak Prescott has to elevate his game against rest of NFC East

BipolarFuk

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Dak Prescott isn’t just a star in the making, less than a year after being drafted in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft, he’s a bonafide star. The NFL Rookie of the Year is the unquestioned future of the Dallas Cowboys, but if there is one area for concern moving forward it has to be his play against the NFC East.

When you look at Prescott’s splits, he was rock steady in almost every facet of the game. It doesn’t really matter the opponent, the down and distance, indoors or outdoors, timeslot, shotgun or under center… his numbers were shockingly consistent. Except against the NFC East.

Against divisional opponents, Prescott’s completion percentage dropped from 67.8 to 56.8. His quarterback rating fell from 104.6 to 77.3. He threw 3 of the 4 interceptions he’d thrown the entire year against NFC East opponents and the Cowboys suffered all of their regular-season losses at the hands of division rivals.

In particular, the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles were his kryptonite. The Washington Redskins he torched to the tune of a 72.2 percent completion rating and a 106.0 quarterback rating. But against the Eagles, he completed just 48.9 percent of passes and had a rating of 76.9. Against the Giants, the completion percentage sat at 51.2 and the rating dipped all the way to 58.6.

The hope is obviously that this is a statistical outlier. Just a handful of rough performances during a rookie year where they were inevitable. But the level of consistency in all those other starts is why there’s concern.

These are the teams he’s going to see most often and quite frequently in the most important games of the season. So the threat that they may have already figured out the blueprint to beating Prescott weighs heavily.

And so a big start against either the Eagles or Giants could go a long way to assuage fears. And, if scheduling traditions hold true, he’ll likely get a crack at the Giants out of the gate.
 

Simpleton

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The first Giants game was the season opener and he was pretty solid overall, his performance the next week against the Skins was not that different. Statistically it was a bit better but you have to remember that Beasley dropped a sure TD on the opening drive against New York and then Dez dropped a jump ball for a TD, a tough catch but it's a play he routinely makes.

The second Giants game was in the cold/rain/snow and honestly I think he's going to have to get used to playing in cold weather conditions.

There aren't any excuses for the first Eagles performance, it was pretty poor overall, but he lit them up in the 4th quarter and obviously had the big comeback.
 

ravidubey

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Despite all his success he was still a rookie last year. He will no doubt improve.

Defenses will also have more game film to defend him better.

The biggest factor this year will be harder competition.

I think we can all agree the NFL had a down year overall in 2016, and I see that changing. We also play the AFC West, which is a big step up from 2016's AFC North.
 
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