Getty Cowboys owner/GM Jerry Jones
There will be no player more valuable to the 2021 Dallas Cowboys than … wait for it … quarterback Dak Prescott.
This absolute shocker, via Jon Machota of The Athletic, who recently was asked to predict the Cowboys’ MVP for the upcoming NFL season and landed on the highest-paid player in team history.
“The Cowboys aren’t going anywhere without their franchise quarterback playing at a high level,” Machota wrote. “His value has never been more evident than after he was lost for the season last year in Week 5. The team certainly played in the weeks that immediately followed like a group that had just lost its leader. With Prescott appearing to be back to full strength during OTAs and minicamp, the expectation is that he will be leading one of the NFL’s top offenses this season. It’s probably going to take new defensive coordinator Dan Quinn some time to get that side of the ball fixed. While that’s going on, Prescott may have to carry even more of the load in some high-scoring shootouts. As long as he doesn’t suffer any setbacks with his surgically repaired right ankle, Prescott has the ability and the weapons around him to be in the MVP conversation.”
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New Passing Record-Holder?
Before suffering a gruesome ankle injury last October, Prescott was on pace to shatter the league’s single-season passing yards record — 5,477 — set by Peyton Manning in 2013. But, according to one prognostication, the 27-year-old may pick up where he left off upon his return to the field.
ESPN’s Bill Barnwell wondered aloud earlier this month whether Prescott is primed to join the prestigious 5,000-yard club, and even surpass Peyton’s mind-blowing mark, given star-aligning circumstances.
“Prescott started and finished four games last season before breaking his ankle in the fifth,” Barnwell wrote. “In those four games, he racked up 1,690 passing yards. No quarterback in league history had even topped 1,600 yards over the first four weeks of the season before last year. If Prescott had kept that up for an entire 16-game season, he would have finished with 6,790 yards, blowing away the passing record with weeks to spare without even considering the possibility of adding a 17th game.
“Of course, drawing conclusions from that four-game sample isn’t so easy. His performance likely would have regressed toward the rest of the league over a larger run. The Cowboys played from behind for most of that first month, leaving Prescott in situations in which he had no choice but to throw over and over again, and they shouldn’t be as awful on defense in 2021 as they were last season. At the same time, though, he did that behind an injury-hit offensive line, and he gets both that line and his three star receivers back for 2021. One way for team owner Jerry Jones to justify that massive contract? Get Prescott to set a passing record.”
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