The Ringer NFL Show - Does the Cowboys' Dak Prescott Belong in the MVP Discussion? | The Play Sheet

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

The Ringer’s Ben Solak runs through the tape of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who's having quite a bounce-back season after last year, when his interception rate was a career high. Dak and the Cowboys offense look dangerous this season, as Dak has elevated his play to sit comfortably alongside the league's other elite quarterbacks. Watch 'The Play Sheet' on YouTube or Spotify every Wednesday at 8 a.m. PT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Howdy, I'm Ben Solac, and this is the play sheet. So weekly pod we do on Wednesdays, and it is a video podcast. You got to click into the Spotify app. You got to watch the video. We're doing Dak Prescott film today. It's going to be great. The opening script, Dak Prescott, playing pretty good ball. This past off season, there was so much just consternation about Cowboys quarterback,

Dak. Prescott. He led a league in interceptions. His longtime offense coordinator, Kellynmore, was like, leaving slash mutually parted ways, slash, he was gone. And head coach Mike McCarthy, who's not. exactly renowned for creative modern play calling, he was going to take charge of the offense. Now, in the offseason, both McCarthy and owner slash general manager slash team overlord Jerry Jones

talked about the importance of cutting down on Prescott's interceptions. And this year, he's throwing a lot of interceptions. So whatever they did worked, right? Wrongish. Yeah, we worked. Okay, like, it's better. Prescott was throwing an interception on 3.5% of his dropbacks last season. That's down to 1.3% this season. Big drop. The funny thing is, at the time then, and even more so now, last season was very clearly an aberration. It was a blip on the radar.

Look at every year in Prescott's career before 2022. His interception rate was 1.5%, 1.7%, 1.7%, 1.3%. It's not that the new McCarthy offense has taken Prescott's interception numbers down. It's that Dak, who's just played a lot of ball at this point, had a high interception year last year and is regressed back to his career average numbers. Now, this brings us to an important point. Descriptively, like in terms of how he is playing, like what he tries to do on the field, Prescott is like largely doing the same stuff that he did last season.

His area arts per attempt is functionally the same, 8.2 to 8.0. His average time to throw is like one one hundredth of a second different, 2.59, 2.6. So he's still holding the ball for just as long and throwing it just as far down the field. if anything has changed for Prescott stylistically, his scramble rate is up like a little bit and his sack rate is up a little bit, which just means he's holding onto the ball a little bit longer against pressure,

and apparently he's more likely to try to make a play happen instead of forcing the ball into a tight window. I say apparently because when you watch the guy, Prescott doesn't look like a quarterback who's afraid of any tight windows. He looks like the same gunslinger he's always been. Let's go to play action. Okay, week eight against the Rams. Watch this play.

Buddy. Touchdown. Okay. Now, how did this happen? We are in three by one, but we have the back to the three receiver side, right? So this is a four by one formation, which is a very Kellyn Moore-ish thing to be doing, okay?

Early in the season, we weren't getting a lot of this from Mike McCarthy and Cowboys. Recently, a lot of four-by-one, very Kellynne Moore. The one is CD-LAM. And so what you're presenting is you're presenting a big issue for the defense. saying, hey, we're about to flood your coverage over here. We're going to put four receivers into the concept. You need to get a lot of bodies over on this side in zone coverage

if you want to deal with all four of these players. However, on the backside, our guy CD Lam is going to beat your corner 101. This is just what he does. So if you're going to not give him safety help, right, if you're going to add that safety in and have him help with all these numbers to that wide side of the field, then we're going to get a boundary 1B1 CD Lamb with no safety safety up. We're going to win that.

We're going to throw him the ball. So it's a little bit dang. you do danged if you don't, right? This is why four by one for the Cowboys can be a really challenging thing to deal with for defenses. Concept wise, you get Ferguson on this seam, you get Tony Pollard out, and then you're going to get, there's like a little curl here, and then we're going to wrap through here with Jake Ferguson, the tight end. When you run this, you actually have, if you're Prescott right now, this is an option, right? Because the high safety stayed high, right? He's worried about something coming here to the tight end.

and you have here this outside corner who's a lot of cushion, right? And so you can throw this. Ernest Jones, the linebacker is not ready to go get that. So that's open. This is also open, right? Pollard right here, this is Michael Hote, who's a, like, a defensive end, outside linebacker, big body out there in coverage. So you can, right now if you want to do is dump this and have Pollard go solve a problem for you.

So this is available to you, and this is available to you. Dak has already released the ball to this player. This is not a guy who is afraid of throwing picks. He's not a guy who's afraid of coverage. There's no quarterback in the league who throws more seam balls, especially when he gets a split-field look as Dak Prescott does. And he's going to throw this seam ball here to the tight end. You see the back of this linebacker's jersey.

This is Roseboom. You see the back of a linebacker's jersey. You throw it above his helmet. You expect that he's not going to be able to get it on the scene. This is a coached thing. But a lot of quarterbacks, A, don't have the gum shun. don't have the stones. And secondly, they don't have the accuracy. Dak Prescott. What a ball. End zone view. What I want to see from the end zone view here is

just Jack's eyes, right? Because what he's going to do pre-snap, or actually not pre-snap, but right, is open his eyes, right, to that boundary side and just check that safety, right? You're just going to peek. Because if he's immediately coming in to go be an additional player against this, this four-strong look, then you can't really throw this seam because that safety is going to be middle of the field. But you just real quick peek at him, make him think, all right, got to be worried about seed and you land. I have to be worried about this half of the field. As long as you stay there, in rhythm, flip my head, land on that back foot, no hitch, drive that sucker. Beautiful truck. So that concept right there, and specifically that four by one look,

that's very Kellan Morris, like I was saying. And Mike McCarthy, when he first introduced this new offense, he was going to run for DAC, he was like, oh, we're going to cut down the interceptions. They talked about running a Texas Coast offense, right? It's going to be the West Coast offense, but with like the DAC Prescott inspired, like some Texas changes, whatever. When you heard them describe this offense, it sounded just like the West Coast offense. It was going to be a lot of horizontal concepts and it was going to be a lot of quick game. And that's what they started the season with. Here's a graph of Prescott's air yards per attempt by game this season.

See that first four-week stretch where like the Cowboys were just thrown really, really shallow and then how for the rest of the season that got kind of thrown out? Yeah, that's not the only thing that happened over the first month of the season for the Cowboys. was. We can see the same thing in quick throw percentage. This is the number of throws that Prescott gets out of his hands in under 2.5 seconds. And to start the season, first four weeks of the season, pretty high rate. And since then, it's been dropping. So the way that McCarthy, like, wanted to change Prescott and change the offense, they started with that. They tried to do that. And it has since fallen away, right? When they talk about this offense, they talked about

horizontal concepts. Next-gen stats has Prescott as the leading touchdown throw in the league on vertical routes, on vertical concepts. That touchdown against the Rams, beautiful throw, six points, vertical concepts, specifically on that seam route, and there's no one in the league who throws the seam route like Dak Prescott. Seam route here from C.D. Lamb against the Seahawks, he runs it along these hashes and really, given the way coverage ends up breaking, he should start bending it like right here, but he actually is a little bit late to he starts bending it like kind of more in this area. And accordingly, he and Dak don't connect on this. is an incomplete pass, but it's still very illustrative to how this offense works why Dax's playing

so well. With these two receivers in this tight look right here on the inside, the Seahawks have a bracket on with these three defensive players. Rules-wise, the first outbreaking route, whoever between these two players, whoever runs the first outbreaking route, Devon Witherspoon, the nickel, will be responsible for that route. Whoever from these two players runs the first in-breaking route, that'll be Bobby Wagner. He'll be responsible for those routes underneath, right? And whatever comes vertical, that'll be picked up by the safety here, quandary digs. And so the Cowboys understand that. They want to get Jake Ferguson, running the in-breaking route to tie down Bobby Wagner so that CD can bend that seam route

in between these split-field safeties. That's what they want to get on this concept. And when we run it, there's our tie-down on Bobby Wagner. Dak wants CD to get in front of quandary digs right here. And he wants to hit him right in this spot. That way, Quandry can't play into the catch point through CD. But CEDD is a little bit late to that bend. It's a little bit flat upfield. As we can see, Diggs undercuts the route, right? Diggs has an opportunity to pick that ball off. When we look at this from the end zone view, though, it's not at the football. You can see the helmet check that weak safety, same as before, land on that back foot, this time with one hitch and then the ball's out. This should have been a

caught touchdown in this window, dude. With a nickel here, Witherspoon, and with Diggs undercutting the route, Dax still gets this thing on CD's face mask. This should have been a caught touchdown. He's throwing this to a point where he says, listen, I know the safety is going to be closing on this route. I know we're in jeopardy of a hit, hit the receiver, a pass breakup, a tipped ball and interception. I don't think we're at risk of all of that. I'm still going to throw this to you and ask you to make the play for me. I'm going to throw it deadly accurate too, despite the fact that it's a tight window. So this should have been a catch and a touchdown, even though the route wasn't run perfectly. Now, fortunately, for

DAC and CDs, they've had a lot of chances at these vertical routes in the end zone. This one, they rip right out of the Miami playbook. This is Mike McDaniel Classic. We go on her center with a fullback, send CD Lamb in motion, and then snap the ball with him in motion when he's in a stack alignment. It's 100% of Mike McDaniel concept. We actually broke down this red zone concept, double post. We love a double post in the red zone. We broke this down in our Tua video in week one. All right? They took this from the dolphins. So double post, beautiful concept in the red zone. We love it. We're going to get quarters here. This is the safety we care about. If he gets pulled by that first post at all, we're going to throw the second post, the double post right behind him.

Play action fake. One hitch. Ball is out. That safety got pulled. And then in the red zone, we talk about ball placement, face mask or higher, right? If we throw low in the red zone, we risk interceptions because that's where the coverage is. If we throw too high in the red zone, there's no one there, right? If we miss him high, no one can pick out or you can't. You're going to hit the Salvation Army bucket. Like there's no risk relative to when you're in the middle of the field.

You throw high, there might be a safety there. There's no risk. If we see a face mask or higher in the red zone, we always want to throw those balls up on the top shelf, ask CD Lamb to go get it. What does CD Lamb do for us? Goes up and gets it. That is excellent timing,

processing, tight window, accurate throw, in the area of the field where it matters, on a vertical route. is Dak Prescott 101. Now that change, right, around their byweek, week, week seven, where they started to push the ball down the field more and started to take out some of the short throws from the offense has led for Dak to be one of, if not the most dangerous quarterback against zone coverage this year. Why so good against zone coverage?

Well, all those throws that we just showed, those were against zone coverage. And in them, Prescott is landing on the back foot, one hitch, and delivering, in timing, in rhythm, aggressive, vertical throws down. in the field with perfect placement into tight windows. That is not the behavior of a quarterback who threw a lot of picks last year and feels like he needs to pull it back. Kid touches a hot stove and now he's now his favorite. Nothing like that.

This is the behavior of court like doesn't give a who. This is F you, I'm better than you football. I can make the plays on the field that you can't make. I can make the throws into the tight windows that you can't stop. This is a quarterback who is fully and completely in command of an offense that is his and his alone that allows him to be aggressive that won't punish him if he throws a pick here or that. He believes he can just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and the scoreboard will say Cowboys win at the end.

One more. Okay, just one more. I can't help myself. Thanksgiving. Four by one again, right? And they went quick snap, right? You saw like the camera was shaken. They broke the huddle fast and then they snapped it on first sound.

Four by one here. We're going to go, Jake Ferguson out of the scene, man. Split field safeties. What does Dak do? Ends up you. Quick snap. Snap on first sound. get out of Dodge.

So, do not put it in the newspaper that Mike McCarthy fixed that Prescott. That didn't happen. McCarthy deserves credit for the fact that the offense has evolved throughout the season. They've done more of the Kell and Moore stuff. They stole the Mike McDaniel play, right? They've done good things offensively. But the narrative that was presented in the summer of this risk-averse, shallow passing, horizontal stretch, West Coast offense, and it fixing Prescott taking away the interceptions,

that did not happen. It is not there in the numbers. It's not there in the film, period. don't put it in the newspaper. Feel free to put in the newspaper that, like, C.D. Lamb's elite, and Jake Ferguson developed very nicely, and Brandon Cooks has been coming along. And, like, Prescott is very good weapons. And so this allows him to play this style of ball. You gave him league average receivers, and he's throwing this many tight window passes. It probably doesn't look as good. So feel free to

put that in the newspaper. But to me, that's not the headline. The headline, the front page stuff, is that Prescott was not deterred by last year's errors, right? He'd had a bad year with bad luck. Defenders were catching everything that he threw at them. He threw a ton of picks. There was criticism. There was visibility. There was contract discussion. And that didn't get into his head.

In fact, like, the aggressiveness has ratcheted up. He's kind of out for blood. He's out to show that he makes plays from the pocket that quarterbacks in the league don't make. He's one of a few guys capable of running an offense like this. And that's why he's in the MVP conversation because you can't replace Prescott with another quarterback. I'll throw in a Trevor Lawrence, Jalen Hertz, Brock Purdy, to a tongue of a lot. Loa Matthew Stafford, like all those guys in the second tier, you can't really put them in here and have the offense be as good. No, this is a first tier quarterback. This is a top tier quarterback.

This is an MVP conversation quarterback, and deservedly so. And that'll do it for us here on the play sheet. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you to Cory McConnell for producing the episode. Thank you to Rain Dakota for slinging that pill around the yard a little bit. Thank you to sports talk radio for doubting Dak Prescott every turn despite the fact that he's very clearly a very good quarterback. And keep watching the videos. and enjoy them and it's good.