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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.
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.