Dak Prescott: ‘I’ll be damned’ to finish season on last week’s performance
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is going to play Sunday. He wants to play and it’s easy to understand why.
Prescott has no intentions of ending his 2017 season with a dud of a loss to a banged-up Seattle Seahawks team. Prescott doesn’t want to end his sophomore season on a sour note that ended the Cowboys’ playoff chances.
“I’m playing. It’s important to me,” Prescott said. “I hope it’s important to my teammates, this organization. I’ll be damned if I’ll finish the ’17 season with that performance last week. It’s big for me to go in and finish this season, like I said, this team, this offense, the right way and the way we want to.”
Prescott had a forgettable performance with another multiple interception game. He threw two, including the fourth pick-six of the season, and the Cowboys fell to 1-5 when he’s thrown multiple interceptions.
Prescott has more than tripled his interception total from his sensational rookie season. He’s thrown 13 this season, more than he ever threw in a college/ NFL season, compared with just four last year.
Prescott isn’t happy with those numbers, but couldn’t pinpoint why it changed.
“I don’t know if there’s one thing I could say,” Prescott said. “Because I bet if I could I wouldn’t be throwing them. It makes you respect this game that much more. Going from the few interceptions I had last year to going to the many I’ve got this year, I know it’s frustrating for me and this team. And I’ll clean it up.”
Prescott has seen other areas of his game take a step back, too. His passer rating has dropped from 104.9 last year to 86.7 this season. His completion percentage is down, too, from 67.8 percent to 63.3 percent. He’s also thrown for fewer than 200 yards seven times this season compared with just three times in games he started and finished last year.
Prescott said this season has taught him “so many things.”
“I think you take a little bit from each game, sometimes every play almost,” Prescott said. “It’s a bunch. I could give you a list on things I’ve learned. But I’m going to make sure that I continue to learn, continue to get better, just try to become a better player.”
Asked if he’d learned more from his successes as a rookie or his struggles this season, Prescott said: “I think a big amount from both. It’s hard to say that this year’s taught me more than last year.
“This year’s taught me how to deal with a lot of more adversity obviously than last year did. To answer that, and then last year, taught me how me how to deal with success. It’s from one end of the spectrum to the other.”
Prescott didn’t make any excuses for his play or the Cowboys missing the playoffs.
He wasn’t going to blame Ezekiel Elliott’s six-game suspension. And he also shot down the notion of him possibly being over-extended with the number of endorsements and off-field commitments he’s taken on.
“That’s away from football and that has nothing to do with the way I study the game, the way I prepare and anything that I do on the field athletically,” Prescott said. “I don’t think they correlate.”
This story was originally published December 27, 2017 at 3:30 PM with the headline "Dak Prescott: ‘I’ll be damned’ to finish season on last week’s performance."