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By Bob Sturm Oct 12, 2020
There will be quicker pieces written about each Cowboys game by others, but beating them to the punch was never my goal with The Morning After. The goal, instead, would be to think things through and to let some of the emotion die down before trying to summarize the events of the previous day. After a night’s sleep, the fresh feeling of a new day and a nice mug of coffee, I often feel my perspective is better. That’s worth allowing others to write their pieces long before I ever would even try.
This isn’t a race to be first. It is about trying to write a piece that properly handles all of the topics on the plate for consumption.
I regret to inform you that this Monday morning, with the sun not yet risen, I remain relatively speechless about how to best talk through this Cowboys-Giants game. A quick scan will reveal that my note-taking and record-keeping was very thorough and complete until roughly 5:36 pm last night. The details after that are pretty sparse.
It would be incorrect to call yourself speechless when you break off 2,000-word summaries on a daily basis, but I do not feel the normal overflowing of hot opinions percolating between the ears. Instead, I believe I share the views of both teams, the fans in attendance and all the media who were at AT&T Stadium last night.
At about 24 minutes to six o’clock, the lead story of the game — a Cowboys team trying to figure out what they are capable of doing amidst all of the self-imposed mistakes while attempting to defeat a motivated division opponent — slipped away into the night. The hero of this era of Cowboys football lay injured and in shock on the field, knowing his season was over and his career might be in peril.
Time has passed. Sleep was had. And yet that particular moment still feels like the only thing my brain can consume right now.
Dak Prescott was the victim of a gruesome and severe ankle injury on Sunday in the fifth game of his fifth season. The results are sudden and significant for a team that had visions of great accomplishment this year. But one by one, as evidence has been gathered both on scoreboards and in injury reports, we are reminded that nothing in the NFL goes as planned in July.
Prescott is known for being a fantastic competitor, a ferocious and near-perfect leader and a man who is best defined by his durability. He followed a QB era that included all-too-many injuries that halted promising seasons in 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2016. Tony Romo was a pleasure to watch, but he was actually defined by health issues that prevented him from ever starting even 48 consecutive games without an absence due to his body succumbing to injury. The final instance, 2016, was a preseason incident that changed the course of Cowboys history. It ended one great-but-battered QB’s career and opened the door for the next.
We have come a long, long way since that day in August 2016. Prescott has taken over Romo’s spot as the Cowboys’ franchise quarterback, and it seems fair to assume that he will ride for at least a decade at the helm here in Dallas by the time he is done. But in terms of simple durability and attendance, he is one of three QBs who have started every single game from 2016 to today. Only Philip Rivers and Russell Wilson can join Prescott in saying they have started all 69 games over the last five seasons. His 4,950 snaps top the NFL altogether.
To the sadness of what appears to be much of the pro football planet right now, however, Prescott will not reach that 70th consecutive start, nor that 5,000th snap without interruption. In a moment of football cruelty, a nine-yard run resulted in what will be a season-ending moment of massive significance in his career. And with it, his value to the franchise will be seen clearly over the next 11 games without him. I don’t mean to suggest the Cowboys will be unable to compete in his absence because the 2020 Cowboys did plan for a situation where they might have to play without Prescott for a short while. But we can circle back to Andy Dalton later.
Prescott is now finished in 2020, which also means his current one-year franchise tag with the Cowboys is essentially over. By all definitions, he is a pending unrestricted free agent in March, and the Cowboys can still use all three options that the CBA grants them: tag him again, negotiate a long-term deal or let him go to free agency. I say all of that not because “the media is trying to stir things up,” but rather because in the last 12 hours, Jerry Jones, Stephen Jones and Dak himself have thought about how this horrific moment where his foot is pointing in very much the wrong direction has affected his career, his security and his ultimate path.
Many things do not matter as much as one might think in the moment. What some unnamed scout or Skip Bayless says truly doesn’t matter. What your agent and Stephen Jones argue about near the tag deadline back in July won’t matter much in the long run. Where you rank on the NFL 100 list will not make a bit of difference in 18 months. But the moment when he questions whether his leg still works is when a player quickly deduces how short his window can be. He is blessed with a chance to play this wonderful game for the entertainment of millions of people and fill his bank account with enough riches to never have to work again — as soon as he’s done taking punishment while wearing a uniform.
Trust me, I have seen enough football and known enough players to be aware that most former players do not get the time of day from this massive NFL machine when they can no longer help a team win. What they do is for the team, the Star and the cause, but when they are laying in that hospital bed, the Star is not undergoing surgery alongside them and it is definitely not doing six months of rehab. Nor is it struggling to get out of bed as a retired player. These are the prices players pay, and they knowingly and willingly take that risk so that we can continue to enjoy football.
Prescott will return, and I suspect he will be fine. But these paragraphs are a direct reaction to watching that man ride off the field on a cart with tears in his eyes and an expression of both sadness and terror. He truly knew how much this means to him, what his goals were for this season, what was at stake for his team and for his own future. I would imagine that particularly resonated as he was being taken off on a cart and both sidelines were wishing him well. His mind must have been racing when he realized this wasn’t some other player on the cart of uncertainty. This was him.
I have always admired his ability to block out the noise and worry about getting better every day. He seems like the perfect man to lead this team because he seems to have a small ego but huge personal responsibility and pride to ignore the noise and focus on what matters. He is about to encounter an immense test, as the catastrophic injury happening in the midst of this contract kerfuffle with no games to play will surely sound alarms, rumors and uncertainty from his bosses and “around the league.”
My quick take is that since it is a freak bone break and not some issue that could rise up again and again like a bad back or bad knee, I assume this will expedite a chance for clear heads in 60 days or so to resume contract talks and get a five-year deal done. But I have been wrong many times, and that is just my quick guess.
For the informed medical opinion, you should read Saad Yousuf’s conversation with former Mavericks head team physician Dr. T.O. Souryal.
The show must go on is a common show-business phrase. Regardless of what happens, whatever show has been planned still has to be staged for the waiting patrons.
Enter the capable understudy, Mr. Andy Dalton.
The story goes that Dalton signed with Dallas precisely and entirely because of COVID-19. His family lives here, and this gives him the best chance to reset his career and find his next stop with a “buffer year” near his home base. He could then see who needs a veteran QB when normalcy returns in the Spring of 2021. (Back in the Spring of 2020, it seemed clear normalcy would resume a year later.)
Odds were that either he would seldom play at all or need to fill in for a two-to-four week period when he’d need to demonstrate an ability far beyond Cooper Rush to lead this team to a few important victories. His play has diminished over the last few years, but it doesn’t take much optimism to squint and understand that the group he had near the end in Cincinnati had plenty to do with the diminishment as well. Could you plug Andy Dalton into the Dallas offense and still replicate an offense that can get to 27 points? Or 30?
I don’t wish to contradict the certainty of speaking about Prescott’s future by then saying that “you just never know” with Dalton, but it is really true in the NFL. These players have small windows, and often we project that this team or that team — for instance, the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs — will “be great for the next five years.” We also assume other teams will be awful for five. The reality is we usually have no clue whatsoever. Unless a franchise has LeBron James, all other projections do not last longer than the paper they are printed on.
But I suppose you never really know. Andy Dalton pushed the team right down the field to victory with a pass to Michael Gallup without an inch to spare against the sideline at the key moment of the final minute. That might be the lightning in the bottle that those moments of rallying around a downed teammate sometimes offer. It also might be an indication that the team was significantly blessed to not have made a poor choice over a backup QB again.
Dalton deserves a ton of credit, and I assume much about the offense will now change. The Cowboys will not have a QB who will be terribly aggressive with the ball, in most cases, but they do have one who understands what gets you beat. They also have one who is used to playing behind a terrible offensive line, so trust me, no matter how bad things are in Dallas without a few starters, it isn’t worse than his 2018 and 2019 groups back in Ohio.
The bar has definitely moved for 2020. Tyron Smith, La’el Collins, and now Dak Prescott are not coming back to help. Trysten Hill may also be lost, and we still have no idea about more defensive reinforcements. But once the smoke clears and the emotions calm, I think this is a real opportunity for the Mike McCarthy Cowboys to show you the difference between this era and the last. The last era had a reputation for Dallas not being able to overcome any absences to key players in the slightest. They were 1-11 without Tony Romo in 2015 and appeared completely incompetent despite having a roster that was a whisker from the NFC Championship Game the year before.
This won’t be easy, but it also is worth seeing through to start building a program for the next few seasons. Can Andy Dalton and these important skill pieces still figure out a path to the NFC East title this year? That doesn’t seem too dizzying a height to me this morning. It seems like a path worth taking. And it starts with all parties not looking too far down the road.
A game against Arizona in seven days will provide a significant challenge in the Cowboys’ quest to reach .500.
