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- Apr 7, 2013
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By Jon Machota
6h ago
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ARLINGTON, Texas — Dak Prescott stood at his AT&T Stadium locker late Sunday night, needing assistance to button his dress shirt. The Cowboys quarterback was unable to complete the task because of the injury he suffered to his right thumb with six minutes remaining in Dallas’ 19-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Cowboys’ offense was a disaster most of the night in the season opener. But bad turned to much worse when X-rays revealed that Prescott fractured the thumb on his throwing hand. The injury occurred when Buccaneers Pro Bowl linebacker Shaquil Barrett hit Prescott’s hand while attempting to knock down a pass.
Prescott initially did not think it was serious, but he did pull himself out of the game. Backup QB Cooper Rush entered and finished the game.
“I thought I jammed it,” Prescott said in his postgame news conference, wearing a protective brace over his right hand and wrist. “I’ve hit my hand on helmets or bodies a lot in my career, and I never really had anything, maybe a jammed finger. That’s actually what I thought it was. The next play I realized I couldn’t grip the ball and I let the sideline know. When I got off, I told the trainers the same thing. I was just like, ‘I can’t grip it. I feel like if you yank it, I’ll be OK.’
“But the X-rays showed different.”
Prescott will see a hand specialist Monday and then have surgery. A timetable for his return will be determined after the procedure, but he’s expected to be out at least a month and possibly two.
“I was told that it was much cleaner than it could’ve been,” Prescott said of the X-ray results. “It’s very disappointing, but injuries happen. I can’t necessarily control it. It’s just unfortunate. Obviously, I’m going to miss some time and not be there for my team. And that’s what hurts more than anything, especially after the start we just put out there.
“I wanted to be able to respond. And not necessarily having that opportunity for several weeks, it’s unfortunate. But I’ll do what I’ve always done any time adversity comes. I’ll take it on head-first, give it my best, and I’m sure I’ll come out of this thing better.
“It’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me. It’s just another bump in the road and I’ll keep moving forward.”
Rush, who started one game last season after Prescott suffered a calf injury, will take over the starting QB role moving forward. Prescott said he’ll do everything he can to assist Rush and the rest of the offense until he can return.
“We’ll draw on that experience last year (at Minnesota) big time,” Rush said of last year’s Week 8 win over the Vikings. “I got my feet wet last year. I got out there tonight. We’ll regroup on offense and we’ll be all right.
“I feel good. A full week of prep will be nice, getting every rep with the ones. You got to just do your job, just execute. It’s cliché, but it really is as simple as that.”
Before Prescott’s injury, the biggest concern was how poorly Dallas’ offense performed. Prescott finished the night completing only 14-of-29 passes for 134 yards and one interception. That’s the third-lowest yardage total of his career, trailing only Week 13 against Washington in 2017 and Week 17 at Philadelphia in 2016 when he only played the first two series. The team finished 3 of 15 on third down. Despite Micah Parsons and the Cowboys’ defense coming up with multiple critical stops to swing momentum, the offense never came close to capitalizing.
After getting a 51-yard Brett Maher field goal on the game’s opening series, the Cowboys’ remaining drives consisted of five punts, an interception and three turnovers on downs.
Prescott never developed a rhythm with No. 1 wide receiver CeeDee Lamb, who was targeted 11 times but finished with only two catches for 29 yards.
“I think offensively our rhythm was up and down,” Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said. “I thought we’d come out and start the way we needed to start. We had some deceptives on the first drive that didn’t hit. But I thought we were in a good rhythm, we were productive. We just weren’t able to sustain drives and put points on the board.”
After some electrifying highlights in the preseason, punt and kick returner KaVontae Turpin never came close to breaking a big return. He managed one punt return for three yards and four kickoff returns for 77 yards. His longest was for 22 yards.
“This was a really tough night for the Cowboys, and a really surprising night,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said. “We’ve got a lot of areas to work on, a lot of areas to improve on. I just thought overall that Tampa just came out and really drubbed us real good.”
The one bright spot was Parsons, who sacked Buccaneers QB Tom Brady twice in consecutive series, both times forcing Tampa Bay to kick field goals. The first sack came on third-and-5 from Dallas’ 8. The next came on third-and-3 from Dallas’ 4. One of the field goals missed, keeping the Cowboys within 9-3 with 3:25 left in the first half.
“He’s so long, strong, explosive and athletic,” Brady said of Parsons. “He gets on edges. He’s a great pass rusher. He’s tough. We just didn’t execute very well. He made some good plays.”
The home crowd of 93,797 was buzzing after both sacks, but the Cowboys’ offense followed up the first with a three-play drive that ended with an interception. The next Dallas possession ended after five plays and a punt right after the two-minute warning.
The biggest concern on defense was that they struggled to stop the run after focusing on that area heavily in the offseason. Buccaneers running back Leonard Fournette carried 21 times for 127 yards. Tampa Bay finished with 152 rushing yards on 33 carries.
And Prescott wasn’t the only notable injury. Left guard Connor McGovern suffered a high ankle sprain. He was wearing a walking boot in the locker room. Safety Jayron Kearse has a knee injury that caused him to leave the stadium on crutches.
Dallas now goes into Week 2 at 0-1, the only NFC East team to lose Sunday. There were several alarming issues throughout the night, but the most significant came late in the fourth quarter as Prescott jogged with members of the team’s medical staff into the locker room.
“The way I see it, it’s just a storm,” Cowboys tight end Dalton Schultz said. “You got two choices. You can either run away from the storm or you can run right into it. I know myself included, and everybody in this locker room, is running right into that mother f—–. That is just our approach.”