Kellenberger: Dak Prescott just keeps on turning heads

Jiggyfly

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Kellenberger: Dak Prescott just keeps on turning heads
Hugh Kellenberger, The Clarion-Ledger 2:45 p.m. CDT August 20, 2016

If you had the choice, would you pick the veteran or the rookie? If you could have only one, would you go with the guy who has been through it all and is just barely post-prime, or the one who is not quite ready but could turn out to be everything you have ever hoped for?

Of course, the veteran's career is going to end soon, leaving you without anyone at, say, quarterback. And the rookie could turn out to be nothing special, leaving you scrambling to fix the problem you created.

It's a popular Internet game, because it says something about who you are as a fan. It's what I texted the biggest Dallas Cowboys supporter I know after former Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott’s second preseason game Friday night — he was 12-of-15 passing for 199 yards, 28 yards rushing and four total touchdowns.

His response said it all: “Romo, but it’s way closer than it should be.”

There’s no way around it. Prescott has become the story of the NFL preseason. He’s thrown more touchdowns than he has incompletions, completed 81.5 percent of his passes and the Cowboys have scored on nine of his 10 drives. You can’t beat that. You just can’t.

“Some guys, they just got it,” wide receiver Dez Bryant told USA Today Sports.

It has Dallas apparently going into the season strongly considering the idea of having Prescott as the team’s primary backup, when the plan had been just to redshirt him. But with the combination of Kellen Moore’s injury, a list of free agent options that do little to inspire and Prescott’s first two pro games, who could blame Jerry Jones?

Dallas knows exactly how important it is to have a strong backup quarterback.The Cowboys went 1-11 without Romo last year, who is 36 years old now and has not played a full 16 game schedule since 2012. There’s a high probability whoever is the Cowboys’ No. 2 quarterback, he will be counted on to play at some point this season.

So yeah it’s the preseason, and Prescott spent a significant portion of Friday’s blowout of the Dolphins playing with Dallas’ first-string offensive line — maybe the best in football — Bryant and tight end Jason Witten. But is that not the exact scenario by which he would play in a regular season game?

This is not possible without Prescott’s talent, which has always been immense, or his desire to learn the intricacies of an NFL offense (including how to go under center instead of taking snaps out of the shotgun). But the biggest external factor is that Mississippi State prepared him for the next step — Prescott said exactly that postgame Friday, that coach Dan Mullen’s offense was every bit a NFL offense — and that the Cowboys are playing to Prescott’s strengths.

They’ve used some run-pass options (RPOs) with Prescott so far, Chris Brown from SmartFootball.com pointed out after the first preseason game. RPOs are essentially when a quarterback is reading a second-level defender (either a linebacker or safety, usually) to determine whether to hand the ball off or throw it into the space the defender created.



It’s not a brand new offensive concept in college, where it was created to add another wrinkle to the run-read option defenses had begun to figure out. But it is something that we have not previously seen at the NFL level, and that makes it both a foreign concept to defenses and a familiar one to Prescott.

That’s how you make your offense work for the personnel, and not the other way around.

The weirdest part of the Prescott story is that it’s altogether possible that he can do the same thing he has been doing for another two games and then turn into a clipboard-holding backup for the rest of the year. That’s still for the best. As good as he’s been, the Cowboys are in win-now mode and are hoping to get Romo through a full season healthy.

But the seventh quarterback picked in the 2016 NFL draft has successfully gone from college star to a pro with a future. That definitely does not surprise Mississippi State fans, but it’s still a heck of a thing.
 

Jiggyfly

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Dak Prescott, the Dallas Cowboys and Third Level RPO/Packaged Play Reads
Monday, 15 August 2016 , by : Chris

Dallas Cowboys rookie Dak Prescott had about as good of a preseason debut as any rookie could ask for: Prescott finished the game 10 of 12 for 139 yards and two touchdowns, including a perfect strike to receiver Terrance Williams down the sideline. But as impressive as that throw was, Prescott’s most impressive trait was his calm and poise: In an opening weekend when higher profile rookie QBs like Jared Goff and Carson Wentz looked at times shaky and off-kilter, Prescott looked like a vet. So while there’s no need to get the hype train rolling too fast — it was one preseason game, and Prescott was facing almost entirely backups and guys who likely won’t make the roster — it was a great start.

But, even if Prescott plays great, all he can do is solidify his spot as the backup QB behind Tony Romo, which is why the most interesting play to me was one that told me something about what the Cowboys will do even when Prescott’s not in there. Specifically, on Prescott’s first touchdown pass, a ten-yarder to Dez Bryant, Dallas head coach Jason Garrett and offensive coordinator Scott Linehan called a “third level” packaged play, also known as a run-pass option or RPO. Third level packaged plays are the newest (although not that new) step in the evolution of shotgun spread “read” concepts: When the shotgun spread first became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the defining plays were the zone read and read-option plays, in which the QB read a “first level” defender, i.e., a defensive lineman. The big innovation by the end of the 2000s and early 2010s were, first, built in screens, and later the earliest packaged plays/RPOs in which receivers ran slants, hitches and sticks and the QB would read a “second level” defender (i.e., a linebacker or nickel defensive back playing like a linebacker) to determine whether to hand off or throw.

In recent years a few teams — most notably Baylor, although there are others — began using packaged plays where the quarterback read a safety to determine whether to hand off or throw. This had two primary effects: (1) it is an excellent response to Quarters coverage, in which the safeties read the offense to determine whether to play the pass or the run, often outnumbering offenses in the run game as they are so difficult to account for; and (2) it transforms a read concept that was originally designed to move the chains by having the QB either hand off or throw a screen into a handoff or a touchdown.

Corey Coleman

Which brings me back to Dak Prescott’s play against the Rams. There was nothing that sophisticated about the concept: The Cowboys called an inside zone run play, in which they blocked all of the Rams’ frontal defenders, including the backside defensive end (i.e., no read option element), and tasked Prescott with reading the safety to the side of the single receiver, who just happened to be Dez Bryant. Now, I’m not sure if Bryant was only allowed to run a fade or had some sort of choice in what route he’d run (either choosing on the fly or via a pre-snap signal between receiver and QB), but teams often adjust the route by the single receiver to find the way to best attack the safety.

In any case, given that it was Dez Bryant singled up, all Prescott really needed to confirm was that the safety wouldn’t be able to help, something he was able to do quite quickly and likely even pre-snap. (A savvier safety might have aligned inside and then hurried back outside; Prescott did stare down Bryant a bit.) And with an extra safety stepping up for the run and a freak of nature 1-on-1 near the goal line, Prescott’s choice was simple:

Prescott

So while Prescott’s performance should give Cowboys’ fans hope for what they might see in the future, this play should give them some insight into what they might see this season: A cutting edge concept that, in the end, reduces to a winning formula: Run the ball behind that great offensive line with extra numbers, or throw it to #88. That makes sense to me.

- See more at: http://smartfootball.com/#sthash.Dcqer8mf.dpuf
 

Chocolate Lab

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You know Linehan installed those concepts. The least imaginative and most risk-averse OC ever (Garrett) wouldn't have.
 

Cotton

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I have noticed we seem to run more play action pass with Dak in there. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but it sure seems like it.
 

lostxn

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I have noticed we seem to run more play action pass with Dak in there. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but it sure seems like it.
As anyone who plays Madden can attest, free blitzers can blindside a QB during play action. I think Romo prefers to have that extra 2 seconds to watch what's coming at him and try to avoid any free blitzers. Then he feels he can squeeze the ball in rather than get a more open receiver.

I'm guessing a younger/healthier player like Dak isn't as scared of getting hit. Dak is also a bigger guy who is going to withstand punishment a bit better than Romo. Time will tell if he's smart about the contact he takes while scrambling. A team with LBs like the Carolina could really clean Dak's clock doing the things Miami let him get away with.
 

dallen

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Someone should probably let La'el Collins know because he was about 4 yards downfield before Dak let the ball go.
 
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