The Ringer NFL Show - Dak Prescott Is the Best QB in the NFC | The Island

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Each week, a guest tries to persuade Nora Princiotti to agree with an argument they feel strongly about. This week’s guest is The Ringer’s Steven Ruiz, who debunks all the myths on Dak Prescott and proves why he’s one of the top QBs in the NFL. Host: Nora Princiotti Guest: Steven Ruiz Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Hawani. And I'm Chuck Mindenhall. And I'm Pizzi Carroll and together we are three-pack. Join us on the brand-new Spotify Live app immediately after all of the biggest fights in combat sports. And also during the way-ins because that's when the real drama happens. So what are you waiting for? Follow the Ringwere M-M-A show right now on our exclusive Spotify podcast feed. And come join the best community in M-M-A.

Peace! We're out of here. I... Like, what is... Do I need to keep going? I mean, you can. This is fun, but, but I take your point that it's sort of like, what are we even talking about here? Hello and welcome to the island on the Bringer NFL show feed. I'm Norbert Fiatty and I am here with the MVP of the island, if we're being honest.

No offense to all of our illustrious guests, but we've got Stephen Ruiz. Eat it losers. Even welcome back. I might get in trouble for that. I got in trouble earlier this week for not following Soak on Twitter. I've remedied that. But now we're just adding insult to injury. Steven, you are a repeat, a many-time Islander.

And I think your record so far this year is pretty strong. I mean, you know, Trevor, like the option in New York, I guess we'd ever fully tested that out. But they inched closer and closer and closer, it seems like. What was the other one? I know I'm missing one. Lamar should never play another game for the Ravens. She should never play on her time for the Ravens.

Well, I guess we'll see. I guess the jury is still out of that one. But what have you got for us today at Stephen? So this is a topic near and dear to my heart. We're going to talk about Dak Prescott. And I didn't know how to frame this episode or this take because there's a bunch of ways you can go with it. There's like the Dak Prescott is overpaid take that I would push back against.

I would actually argue he's underpaid. There's the, I don't know, he's not good enough to get them to a Super Bowl take. But I'm just, I settled on he's the best quarterback in the NFC. And if we're talking about getting a team to the Super Bowl, if you have the best quarterback in your conference, I think that's a pretty good head start. So I'm on, Dak Prescott is the best quarterback in the NFC Island. Take for the island like a record, spinning on a turntable.

Only now, that record is skipping. So this is interesting because before we started recording, you told me and, producer Stefan Anderson are a illustrious producer that you might cry during this episode and that you were sitting in front of five pages of notes. And when I hear you say

DAC is the best quarterback in the NFC, I guess my question is, is that conversation just is DAC Prescott better than Jalen Hertz? Because I looked it up by EPA per dropback and the NFC quarterbacks that we're talking about are, who are above

DAC, are Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy, who by the way, total aside, this is so unrelated. But if you want a good laugh, if anybody wants a good laugh, just like look up Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy's statistical comparisons, because they are the same.

They are the exact same numbers except one of them, Brock, takes fewer sex. Everything else is literally identical. The Shadayette offense is a miracle. Anyway, unrelated. Those two, then you've got Hertz and Jared Gough. I think with the Garoppolo Purdy,

two-headed monster and Jared Goff I don't think we need to spend a lot of time there. Hertz is the one where I go okay I would say that purely drop that passing or that's just based on the season though because I think like in the grant like if you ask a random fan on the street like which quarterback

would you rather have for 2023 you would get answers like Matt Stafford I think some people might pick Jared Goff over Dak Prescott because he's been to a super Super Bowl. Tom Brady is still in the NFC. Aaron Rogers is still in the NFC. I think there are a lot of players that, like I said,

if you ask the average fan think is better than Dak Prescott and would have them next year over Dak Prescott. So based on this year, yeah, it's really just, oh, yeah, he's better than Jalen Hertz, which is, you know, it's a complicated conversation because they're two different types of quarterbacks. Sure. I think it goes beyond that.

And honestly, this is really, it's not really just DAC is the best quarterback in the NFC. It's just that DAC is severely underrated. The way that he gets talked about is very frustrating for me. And that's why I have five pages of notes, because it gets into a lot of things. Like just narratives is the one thing that I think is very easy to push back with Dak Prescott. And then we talk about all of the shortcomings he had this year. I say all of them when it was really just one, just the interception thing. And then the bad performance against the 49ers. We've now seen him have two bad performances in a and playoff losses.

So there are a bunch of narratives surrounding him. He's overpaid. He doesn't elevate his team. He's been a product of a good support system. He throws too many interceptions. I can keep going on and on. He doesn't win in January. He's not a winner.

All of these things. I can push back against easily. They are verifiably false. And that's why I have five pages of notes because there's a lot of evidence backing up the fact that Dak Prescott is not just a good quarterback. He is one of the very best quarterbacks in the NFL.

Now, I'm not saying he's elite because we have some very good quarterbacks at the top of the hierarchy. Like, he's not better than Josh Allen. He's not better than Mahomes. He's not better than Herbert. I don't think he's better than Lamar. I don't think he's better than Joe Burrow, but Joe Burrow is a name that's going to come up a lot because the way we talk about Joe Burrow should be the way we talk about Dak Press.

Sure. It's also funny that just like the takeaway from that list is, the NFC quarterbacks are really nothing to write home about right home about right now. I take your point that if we expand beyond just this season, you start adding Brady and Rogers to the conversation. But based on this year, particularly given those two guys' age and the fact that both of them have had moments in recent memory where they have at least flirted strongly with retirement, it's a little rough out there. It is very rough. It's like all of those names are in the AFC. Anyway, you went through all of those narratives.

Let's see if we can get the waterworks going as fast as possible. Which one is the most flawed? Which one bothers you the most? Let's go with the clutch, the winner. Let's go with that one. He's not clutch. He's done a winner. He doesn't win in the fourth quarter of the playoffs.

Which is, I can't think of a more wrong statement. Here's a stat. Since 2016, when Dak Prescott entered the league, there is not a better quarterback by EPA in the fourth quarter of playoff games, and it's not close. He's averages 0.33 EPA per play, which is around like what Patrick McCombs would average over the course of an MVP season. Next on the list is Aaron Rogers at 0.2.8.

That 0.05 gap is huge. It is huge. He's also eighth in EPA overall in the playoffs since 2016, or 2016. So he's been one of the best playoff quarterbacks in that. NFL. He's been one of the best fourth quarter quarterbacks in the NFL postseason. And somehow he has to deal with this narrative that he is not a winner and he's not clutching. He doesn't come up in big

moments when he does this in the fourth quarter in the postseason. Now, let's talk about another quarterback who does get the benefit of the doubt. Let's talk about Joe Burrow, who is known as a winner. Big game, Joe, he shows up. He has a worse. Yeah. The Bengals have not scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter of any postseason game he's played in. They have scored 12 points if you include overtime. 12 points. Sam Hubbard

has led more touchdowns than Joe Burrow has in his postseason career. How is he clutch? He has a word. Let's expand the scope to the full playoffs. He has a worst playoff EPA than Mark Sanchez, who also went to two straight AFC championship games to start his career. Why

is he a winner? Why is he a winner? And Dak Prescott is a loser. Someone explain this to me. I can't believe we've already invoked Mark Sanchez for seven minutes into this podcast. That's really interesting, though. I've got to be honest, I'm surprised.

I'm not coming off the Burrow thing yet. I'm not coming off the Burrough thing yet. All right. Back Prescott's game against the 49ers. It was horrible, right? What a choke job. It was against the number one defense in the NFL. Let's not forget that.

Sure. Two of Joe Burroughs playoff games last year were worse by EPA. But he's just the winner. He's just the winner. His EPA per play was worse than Dak Prescott in the Titans win. But do you know what the headlines were? I googled this. Do you know what the headlines were after that game?

Tell me. When the defense picked them all three times and set up the game when he field goal. So congratulations for Googling it. Joe Burrow overcomes nine sacks to lead the Bengals to a win. And now we have conversation. Now we're talking about Joe Burrow possibly passing Patrick Mahomes. And then in the same in the same breath, people are asking, why doesn't Lou Anna Rumo get more respect?

Hmm, I wonder why. I wonder why, guys. Anyway, that's enough Joe Burrow. There's a lot of silliness going on. But the only reason I bring that up, it's funny how narratives just get formed and you never come off of it. Like, by Dak Prescott's age, Peyton Manning had three playoff wins.

Dak Prescott has two. Right. His third playoff loss, his third playoff loss, we just saw Dak Prescott's third playoff loss, was a 41 to nothing lost to the Jets. When he had three Hall of Famers on the offense, a pro ball left tackle. Wow.

Could you imagine what was being said about him back then? Well, in theory, yes, but I wonder if it actually was. I'm not done. I'm not done. Tom Brady had a worst playoff performance in a divisional round loss last year. Aaron Roders had a worst divisional playoff round loss last year to the same team. He didn't score a touchdown. Why are these the narratives around Dak Preston?

I don't understand it. I can think of two main reasons. Yes, his team has not gone to a Super Bowl. It's not gone to an NFC championship. Yes, the more innocent of the two is the team that he plays for, which has a playoff history over the course of both of our lifetimes. That's not particularly pretty. The other one, I'm sure you can guess, is a little bit less friendly.

Yes. And that's also a topic I want to bring out, because I think that's, I don't think that's all of it, because I do think we have become obsessed with rings and legacy and all this talk. But I do think part of it is the fact that Black, Dak Prescott is a black quarterback. And I don't think that people are used to discussing black quarterbacks in the terms that we discuss cerebral quarterbacks.

They don't get as much credit to that. Who DAC is. Yeah. He's a pre-snap. He wins pre-snap. He wins with his mind. He's a processor. He's a pocket passer.

typically, especially now, those guys get celebrated because they're becoming rarer and rare. Do you remember the hoopla around Mac Jones? Just because the guy went from one to two in his progression and stayed in the pocket because he couldn't leave it because he can't move. Like, this is why I said,

I might cry. This is why I get very frustrated about this because it's just not based in reality. Like there's so much proof pushing back against all of these notions. he is 9th in EPA per play since he was drafted. He is 6 in success rate. The only quarterback in the NFC right now,

and this includes Tom Brady, Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rogers. The only one ahead of him in EPA and success rate is, it's just success rate, is Jimmy Garoppolo. And that's because he has Kyle Shannon. He's 9th in passing yards. He's 6 in passing touchdown. He's 4th in wins. The only quarterbacks that have more wins are Tom Brady, Aaron Rogers,

Patrick Mahomes, and Russell. He's 5th in wins. he wins he puts up stats he's clutching the playoffs he's clutching the fourth quarter of playoff games he's a pocket passer he's not like he doesn't play this like reckless style his game is going to age

just fine like this is that he's not overpaid like he's this is a piece that this is a piece of the narrative that I don't understand DAC is not that expensive quarterbacks are just expensive

he's a thin average annual value on his current contract which is probably by the way, like right around where he fits in the league rankings overall. And that's actually, that means that he's not even being paid commensurate with his ranking because there's just always going to be a couple great quarterbacks on rookie deals who don't factor into the salary rankings. That's fine. That's just how it works. He's making what 34-year-old Matt Stafford makes.

I mean, sure, I'm sure there are people during that Super Bowl season that would have made an argument than Matt Staufford is a better quarterback. Who would you rather hit your wagon to right now? Matt Stapper with his arm falling off or Dak Prescott? I don't think that that's a difficult conversation. I think that's like honestly sort of madness. Yeah, and there's been talk about his cap hit. It goes up to 50 million next year,

but they can restructure the deal and save $22 million. And the cap is going up. The reason that his cap hit is so high in the middle two years of the con, and I think this year, next year, or next year in the year after, in two years of the deal is because the rest of the deal it was like 17 million, 19 million these like incredibly incredibly

incredibly friendly numbers if you have a good quarterback on a second contract. Like that has nothing to do with DAF. They chose to have it be a lot in a couple of years and a little in the rest of the years. They could have probably structured it

in a way that spread it out more evenly and they didn't. That has literally nothing to do with him. And they can restructure his deal and save $22 million. They can bring his cap hit down to like a $35, $38 million. Like a month ago, we were talking about, oh, should the Lions re-signed Jared Gough?

We were talking about Daniel Jones making $40 million, and we're worried about Dak Prescott making like five more million than those guys? He makes $40 million a year. I'm not going to, like, I'm really truly not going to bat an eyelash if the Giants pay Daniel Jones like $33 million a year. That's just the world we live in right now. Like the NFL we live in, those guys get paid. And Dak Prescott is a top-term quarterback.

They make a lot of money. Quarterbacks on second contracts are expensive. That's just how this works. But Dak Prescott, where he falls, Derek Carr makes more money than Jack Prescott. Like, Dak Prescott is not expensive. He's not an expensive quarterback.

The Cowboys are not extending themselves financially in a way that is at all unusual. It is like incredibly ordinary, if not actually kind of a bargain. makes no sense. I think we should talk about the interceptions. Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about the interceptions and let's talk about the offense

because I do like, I think you're, I mean, I know you're absolutely right that we should spend part of this conversation talking about, you know, what it means to be a cerebral quarterback and what the different ways we talk about white quarterbacks who play that way and win that way versus black quarterbacks who play and win that way. I also think that there's a factor in that that has to do

this specific offense for better and worse. So talk to me about, like, what is your thesis on the interceptions? Well, okay, the interceptions. One, coming into the year, he had a 1.7% career interception rate. Over that span from 2016 to now, the only starters with the lower rate are Brady, Rogers, Mahomes, and Breeze. And Alex Smith, who, I mean, we know what was going on with Alex Smith. is throwing four-yard passes. But those other four are Hall of Famers.

So it's never been a problem coming into it. Now, let's talk about the 15 interceptions he threw this year. Five of them were as a result of a drop, a miscommunication, hit his thrown, receiver fell down or a stop drop. That's not me. That's PFF charting those. That's according to PFF slash true media.

A third of them. The only other quarterback with more than three of those, that genre of interception, is Justin Herbert with four. Josh Allen, who was right up there with him in Picks. I know Josh Allen two more passes, but whatever. Just let me cook. Only had two of those. Burrow only had two of those.

And Burrow threw 12 interceptions. Mahomes had zero. Lamar had zero. Like these other guys, he got very unlucky. Yes, he threw a lot of bad interceptions. But also that the total is kind of inflated by the fact that there was a lot of weird interceptions baked in there. And a lot of the interceptions came in situations where interceptions aren't necessarily

the worst thing in the world. like on third and long and you're throwing it downfield and you get an interception, that's not really that bad of an interception. Like that's by EPA or win probability, that is a better play than taking a sack on second down. So I think we kind of tend to over put too much weight on interceptions. And then the fact that he's never been an interception prone quarterback before

and the fact that a third of the interceptions were basically not his fault, I don't see why we get hung up on such a small sample size of, a bad point. So that I agree with you totally on that point. The only thing that I would push back on is just like, this is not Dax's fault whatsoever is maybe too strong, but this is not primarily Dax fault. I don't think that that was,

I don't think that the interception thing was 100% just weird, right? Like, I think part of why he threw those, and that includes the five that were tipped or dropped or whatever, has to do with the types of throws that this offense asks him to make. Like, Dak had to throw into traffic a lot. Dak threw, uh,

Dak threw a pick, the second and two pick, which I think of the, the two picks against the 49ers, was the one that you don't like, right? Like the third and nine, first of all, it's third and nine.

Um, but he's maybe a little bit late or Gallup didn't quite right, run the route correctly. Whatever. I'm not going to, not going to be. super critical of that one. The second and two is mainly bad because

it's second and two, but he's also forcing the ball to CD Lamb between Fred Warner and Jimmy Ward. He shouldn't have thrown that ball. So we can't, like, in this specific, and we're not using one play to base an opinion off, in that specific moment,

I don't think Dak should have thrown the ball. I do think that there is something emblematic of that of what happened in this offense this year. Is that like, he was forcing the ball to C.D. Lamb when C.D. Lamb was super duper covered. Like, if you look at the dots on that play, when I was a little kid and I was like walking with my parents, they would do this thing where like each of them would hold one of my hands and I would like swing

between them. That's what it looks like. Jimmy Word and Fred Horner are like just like right next to CD Lamb and Cedley Lam is right in between them and it's like a cute little sandwich. Bad place to throw a football. And if you're throwing into traffic like that and if you're throwing to covered receivers like that and trying to use these like split seconds of timing and understanding what defenders are going to do to make the right decision, you're going to get tipped balls because there are within the general vicinity of where the ball was supposed to end up when he threw that ball, there were six hands, right? Like there's six hands. That is six hands that can touch it and make it go weird places and have it bounce and like you're just going to have a lot of that if you

run an offense like this. And it doesn't, it is not like, DAC is not part of that conversation, but the first part to me is how this offense works. And it's not, the reason that we know DAC is not the primary piece of it is because Mike McCarthy has done this with another quarterback and it didn't go well then either. So yes, I think we have to bring up the fact that, I think you said five of the picks this year, we're in situations like that that are sort of fluky. I don't know that they're totally fluky,

but the flukiness shouldn't be used to indict DAC, it should be used to indict the offense. That's at least how I look at it. No, I think that's fair. And I think, I mean, we never know, like, what kind of input the quarterbacks have on this. on the offense, like Ben Rothesberger famously, didn't like play action, didn't like going under center, and that's why the Steelers' offense was the way that it was. So maybe

Dak Prescott has this preference where he wants to play this style, this style that puts so much on his plate. It's really like a grown-up adult passing game. It puts a lot on the quarterback. He has to set the protections. It's full field progression reads. Like, this isn't, and I don't want to disparage Jalen Hertz now, but like you watch the Eagles offense and it's totally different. It's nothing like you. If he was asked to do what Dak Prescott does, I don't think he would have as clean of a game

as he typically does. Now, like I said, that could be Dax's preference and maybe we're blaming the wrong person, but this offense does tend to produce those types of throws as evidenced by the fact that Cooper Rush, his turnover worthy play rate was higher than Dax by a couple

percentage points. It was one of the worst in the leagues. Obviously, he's Cooper Rush and he's Dach Prescott, but I think it at least suggests that this offense tends to ask the quarterback to make risky throws. Dak Prescott led the NFL in tight window throws according to the next-gen stats.

Right. That's another thing. If you miss by, the margin for error is very small because it's a timing offense that asks you to throw in a tight window and to anticipate. So if you get one thing wrong,

like you just guess wrong a little bit or you're half second late, like on the gallop throw, it's an interception sometimes. And the fact that, that he hasn't had a year like this before 2020 is a testament to his processing and his decision making. I am very, if it's not sort of obvious at this point,

like I am very quick to blame McCarthy, frankly. I also think part of it, you know, we should talk about how this roster was built. And whether that's Jerry Jones, whether that's Stephen Jones, whether that's Will McLeigh, just the whole way that this front office works is its own. bag of worms. But this is like

inextricable from McCarthy. But I do think that like if you look at, you know, he runs this version of this West Coast offense. And if you look back throughout his career, if you look at how things have gone in Dallas, if you look at his tenure in Green Bay, a recurring issue for his offenses when they had down years was

either because they thought it would work out or just by necessity, when the offense really only went through one guy, right? Like the year he got fired, it was, it was, the offense really struggled because it was just like all on Devonte Adams. Jimmy Graham was the next closest pass catcher that year. And if you go back when those Packers' offenses were at their best were, you know, when they won the Super Bowl, they had Donald Driver, they had Greg Jennings, they had James Jones, the good years in the 2010s. It was either Jordy Nelson and Jennings, Jordy and Randall Cobb. it doesn't work at its best if it's going through primarily one guy.

And I think if you do, you know, if you do a little bit of hindsight being what it is, this year the idea was for Citi to kind of grow out of being mainly a slot guy and play a little bit more of that flanker role. And they had this idea where it was like, okay, we're going to try to use our scheme so that even if Cee's, has this really, really, really, really heavy target share, really, really heavy share of the production in this offense, that that's okay. And I just think that you don't really have proof of concept for that idea throughout this guy's entire career. And I don't know if that's, I mean, it's definitely a recurring theme for McCarthy. So maybe part of that is on him still, or if that's a front office thing. And part of it, right, is like, maybe there's wishful

thinking that Michael Gallup was going to be healthier. and was going to recover from the injury in a better way. And even in this game, right? Like maybe if Tony Pollard doesn't get hurt, like we're talking about the receiver positions, it's obviously different. But he's one of your explosive, you know, receiving targets in a lot of ways.

So there are certainly things that are outside of their control that could have made a difference. But I do think that like, look, if you can look at past McCarthy offenses and go, when you tried to funnel it all through, Devante Adams, it still didn't work, then I think you probably can logically follow. If you try to funnel all of this through C.D. Lamb, it's also not going to work. And that's no offense to St.D. Lamb is great.

But there's just not a lot of history to say that this, this idea is effective. And it just makes it too hard on the quarterback. And if we're not indicting Aaron Rogers for that, I don't, like, we shouldn't do it to DAC. Right. And you brought up two good points. I think the offense, the nature of the offense, there's a lot of isolation routes

where you're asking the receiver to win on their own. And the Gallup interception against the 49ers is a good example of that. Like if you pause it at the moment that Dak Prescott is throwing the ball, Gallup has leverage on the defender. Like he's in front of the defender. It's a comeback route.

He could box him out. He should make that catch. Or he should at least not let the cornerback cut off the route. Dak trusts him to do that. He throws it. He tries to anticipate it. It doesn't happen.

cornerback gets it. Gallup kind of gave up on the play. But I think that speaks to your point where this offense is better when you have dudes that can win. And they only have one guy that can win. And I see a lot of people like talking about his supporting cast. It feels like Dak came in in 2016 and did have a good supporting cast, one of the best offensive lines. Zeke was at his best. They had Des Bryant. They had Jason Whedon, who was kind of washed up at the time. Des was kind of washed up too. but and it feels like since then we haven't updated our perception of what the supporting cast is. The supporting cast this year was not good at all

outside of CD Lamb. Austin Gale posted this chart it was total EPA on targets for the Cowboys receivers. After CD Lamb, do you know who was second in total EPA on targets? T.Y. Hilton, who was signed in the middle of the year and is like 35 year old burner, a downfield stretcher. After him was Jake Ferguson. Jake Ferguson is a person that does not exist. I'm sorry.

People bring up Tony Pollard and Dalton Schultz. First of all, Dalton Schultz, Dalton Schultz was a fourth round pick. Donald Schultz had 55 catches, 555 yards, and five touchdowns in Sanford. By the way, too many fives. But that sounds pretty good for a tight end, right? One year, 555 yards, five touchdowns, 55. That was this entire college career.

Why is Dalton Schultz like a weapon that we know? name. Why is the back-of-the-box feature when we're talking about their offense? Tony Pollard did not, how many, let me ask you this, Nora. How many NFL games did you play in this year where you had over 15 touches through weeks one and eight of the 22 NFL season? Well, me, zero. Yeah, that's funny because Tony Pollard had the same amount. He didn't start getting the ball until week nine.

And then he missed the last two games. From week nine to week 15 is when Tony Pollard was getting a lot of his touches. do you know who had the best offense in the NFL during that span? The Dallas Cowboys did. What a coincidence. When he had a second good player on the offense, they had the best offense in the NFL for that stretch. And then we talk about the offensive line.

The offensive line that ranked 28th in ESPN's pass block win rate. Yeah. That dominant offensive line that gives Dak Prescott so much time. It ranked 14th in PFF pass blocking grade. So even by that standard, it was mediocre league average. by ESPN's charting, it was one of the worst in the NFL. Yeah.

So, I mean, when you start to chip away at these narratives and these points that are used against them, he doesn't win, even though he wins more than any other quarterbacks

besides the guys that are going to the Hall of Fame. He doesn't win in the fourth quarter, even though he's the best fourth quarter playoff quarterback since he's entered the league. He's the eighth best playoff quarterback.

He doesn't, his supporting cast was not good at all this year. And he still produced very good football. He was the, best court, if you exclude interceptions for everyone, not just that Prescott, he was the best quarterback by EPA. By success rate, without even excluding

the interceptions. He was the best quarterback in the NFL by success rate, which means they were consistent down to down, better than any other passing game, including Patrick Mahomes. I, like, what is, do I need to keep going? I mean, you can. This is fun, but, but I take your point that it's

sort of like, what are we even talking about here? All right, maybe we should. shouldn't keep going if it's just going to end with the two of us screaming Dalton Schultz back and forth at each other. I'm sure that's good audio. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. No, it's it's been a weird. This is like the first therapy session of the island.

It's been a weird week because it is like it just seems like a lot of the DAC arguments boil down to he didn't like a winning quarterback is supposed to win the game by himself. That's not a thing. like that's not a Mahomes doesn't do that Mahomes like we're making an argument about Patrick Mahomes being like the ultimate difference maker

and first of all he's maybe the best quarterback we've ever seen so it's a little bit unfair but second of all Patrick Mahomes is impacted by his situation Patrick Mahomes has done this incredible thing this year where they can move on from Tyree Kill and be just fine offensively that said

they made a bunch of offensively line upgrades that, you know, I don't, if you give that people in that building, True serum and ask them if they would undo the Orlando Brown move if they could, maybe, I don't know. For the most part, all the decisions they made to upgrade along the offensive line have worked out. It's not like, oh my God, this is the greatest offensive line ever,

but that has worked out. They really lucked into Isaiah Pacheco, and that's been a real asset to the offense. And Mahomes is also special, right? But, like, you can't even look at maybe the best quarterback ever in the ideal year to prove that someone who is really transcendent in that way can transcend situation. And he still didn't.

Nobody does. That's not a thing. That's just not how quarterbacking works. It also hurts your case when Chad Henney comes in cold off the bench and leads a 99-yard drive. And then in their first Super Bowl run, he comes off the bench and clinches the Browns win. Yeah. It's just, it's not a thing. And we choose to apply it in only very specific circumstances. DAC has definitely been on the receiving end of that this week. It's weird. It should stop. And I agree with you, Stephen. It's very dumb. I'm on the island with you here.

I don't know that we didn't really talk that much about whether DAC is the best quarterback in the NFC. I do think the Hertz thing is really interesting because you're just talking about such different. and at what point you want a quarterback who impacts the run game in that type of special way over someone who is an elite processor in the way that DAC is. I would choose DAC like just for the long term. I do think that he's operating at a much higher degree of difficulty. But that one's tough and I would be amenable to kind of, you know, choose your fighter on that. And people are going to have different.

And stop. on what they want offense to look like. And stop if you've heard this before. A second year Eagles quarterback having a breakout behind the best offensive line in the league when they have mediocre early down results and are very, very, very good on third down, which has proven to be unsustainable year to year.

And they are very, very good in the red zone. And that is the main reason for the breakout and the big statistics. Stop if you've heard that before. Wow. And stop if we've ever had that. It's going to have to beat the Carson Wentz allegations. And stop if we've had that debate

regarding Dak Prescott before, by the way. I remember the Dak Prescott, Carson Wentz, debates. That's true. That's true. What a time. But here's the reality of the situation and why it's so flawed the way that we talk about quarterbacks. Dak Prescott has been in the year, or been in the league for six healthy seasons. That means there have been six Super Bowls.

That means there have been 12 NFC title places. He's been in the NFC with Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, Drew Breeze. Patrick Mahomes is on the other side of the bracket. Shannon's 49ers teams, Sean McVease Rams teams. Like, is it really that crazy that he hasn't gone to an NFC title game? His rookie year, he had the game tied with Aaron Rogers.

He, like, was matching Aaron Rogers' throw for throw in the playoffs. And the only reason they lost is because Aaron Rogers made one of the best throws in postseason history to Jared took. And then Mason Crosby hit, like, a 50-yard field goal that had Skip Bayliss questioning if, like, God had intervened in the play. That's what it took for him to lose the first time.

Yeah. When they lost to the Rams in 2018, or it was the 2018 season, it was in 2019, that was one of his better games by EPA. Like, he had a good performance and they lost. So that's two losses where he's played really well against, one was against one of the greatest quarterbacks we have ever seen at his peak. That was the best Aaron Rogers we have ever seen, in my opinion, the 2016 year where he won MVP. And then one of the best offenses we haven't seen now, Jared Gough, I'm not going to put him on that pedestal. But obviously, that offense was one of the best ever. it was the best in the NFL.

Those are the two teams he lost to. Like, and those are two out of his four playoff losses. It's just, it's not fair the way we talk about quarterbacks because only one guy can win a Super Bowl every year. Yeah. Only one guy. Only two guys in the conference can go to a conference title game every year. It's been six years.

Drew Breeze was 31 by the time he got his second playoff win. Dak has two. Philip Rivers had three playoff wins at Dak's age. Peyton Manning had three playoff wins in six games. Dak has two and four games. If you can do math, that's the same winning percentage. And DAC has outproduced all of them in the playoffs. Well, good thing we can't do math.

Yeah, I guess the good news out of this is like, I don't think they're very far away. I mean, clearly based on the quarterback performances that they are getting, this team is in a relatively good position. I do think, like, look, the one thing that we're not talking about in terms of just, is he taking advantage of a good situation is that one thing that has been different this year is that the investments they've made defensively have started to pay off. I'm not saying it's perfect defense.

I'm not saying it's the 49ers defense. But they're in a window where they can have a really, really, really good team. Now, whether or not they do, I am one million. percent with you. That does not hinge on DAC playing differently or better than he is playing right now. He can play exactly the same and they will be in a great situation. I do think the good news from that is maybe this is naive. I just feel like this team could get one more difference maker offensively.

And things might look really different. They might be in a situation where like, you can beat Brock Purdy. the 49ers, right? Like, it doesn't seem, the thing that gives me sort of anxiety about whether or not it's going to happen is just Mike McCarthy has had a lot of, a lot of moments to get this right

and doesn't have a great hit rate at doing so. But I do really feel like if they could just add a little bit of firepower on the offensive side so that there were fewer of those tight window throws so that you have

just one more guy who can win a lot of the issues with this offense would go away and it would mirror the really good offenses that he ran in Green Bay which always had solid secondary options. So the good news is that

like finding a franchise quarterback is the hardest thing to do in football, maybe in professional sports. Congratulations to the Dallas Cowboys. You're good. It's fine. Everybody calmed down. Yeah. I would be optimistic because, like you said, there's like two fixes.

There's like two fixes away on the offense from being one of these teams we talk about it, like having a realistic shot at winning the Super Bowl. Find a second receiver, maybe find another lineman or figure out what to do with Zeke and Pollard. I know Pollard just suffered an injury, which is unfortunate. they're close. They're very close. They're a good offseason, a good offseason away. A good draft, a good free agency, a good trade.

Just one of those three things. They're that close to getting to a point where I think Dak Prescott, if he doesn't win more, then it's fair to start criticizing him. But like, criticizing based on this notion that he has this great supporting cast, just isn't true. And it hasn't been true for a few years. Like, the offensive line fell off after like two years. Like, it's been fine, but it wasn't the elite unit.

used to be. The other thing is like, I mean, look, I get it. They scored 12 points. The other thing that we didn't talk about is I think the game plan was like, I understand being scared of the 49ers defense. I would be scared of them too. But taking that fear and turning it into a game plan where you do not test them downfield when that is like one of the few places that they're vulnerable. That is something that I don't think is being talked about enough this week and might have something to do with why they only scored 12 points. But you only scored 12 points. It's not a good game. By the way, I don't think Dak had a good game on Sunday. I just think that it's one game.

Also, by a touchdown. They were underdogs. They weren't supposed to, like, the 49ers are really good. The 49ers were favored to win that game. It kind of makes sense that the 49ers won that game. It's not some big, massive surprise. Right.

And, like, the Cowboys dropped their interceptions. The 49ers caught theirs. Caught them. That was the difference in the game. Like, I feel like the quarterback performance is, when you add in the context of who was calling the plays and what they had to work with, wasn't that far off.

I thought both teams got basically the same because around the interception, DAC was fine. I mean, they were moving the ball. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to say. Dalton Schultz, come on now. All right.

I'm very obviously on the island with you, Stephen. I'm going to just, like, you and I can just, this is great, because I'm on the island. We can keep yelling on the island. we've probably done enough for today. I apologize to all of the listeners' ears. Leave Dak alone. Everybody be nice.

Calm down. It's going to be fine. Criticize, criticize Dak one more time. I'm going to scream Dalton Schultz in your ear. Yikes. All right. This is Fen the Island on the ringer NFL show feed. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Stephen.

Thank you to Dalton Schultz. I'm sorry you were slandered so much on this episode. We will be back next week. For now, Shield Capadio will be up next on the feed. going in depth on NFL news tomorrow on The Scramble. Thank you to Stefan Anderson for production on this episode and to Connor Nevins and Arjuna Rongal for additional production supervision.