Dallas Cowboys won’t play QB Dak Prescott until the season opener against Tampa Bay
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott has all but been ruled out of playing in Saturday’s home preseason game against the Houston Texans, coach Mike McCarthy announced Wednesday.
Prescott is still recovering from a strained latissumus on his right side.
McCarthy said the Cowboys will remain cautious with Prescott, who initially took himself off the practice field on July 28.
He returned on a limited basis on Monday and he was limited in practice again on Wednesday.
“Dak’s status is limited. We’ll just continue the throwing regimen and keep building up the volume,” McCarthy said. “There’s a good chance he probably won’t play.”
With Prescott not playing against the Texans, it means the team’s star quarterback won’t see any preseason action because McCarthy said the last exhibition game, against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Aug. 29, was going to be reserved for players trying to make the roster.
And with the Cowboys kicking off the season against the Buccaneers at Tampa Bay on Sept. 9, it means that Prescott will have gone 11 months between playing in an NFL game. The ankle injury that sidelined him for the last 11 weeks of the 2020 season occurred on Oct. 11.
It also means that Prescott and the first team offense won’t have any game snaps until they face Tom Brady and the defending Super Bowl champions in three weeks.
That is not how McCarthy planned to open the season, but it is the state of things.
The coach was adamant at the start of training camp that he wanted Prescott to get some time with the offense in the preseason to develop some continuity.
Now, he is making the best of the situation and trusting that the work they will do in practice will suffice. He understands that criticism will come of the team gets off to a slow start.
“Well, I think you have to point to your practice environment,” McCarthy said. “If the offense started slow and the quarterback didn’t take any live reps, criticism was applied. That’s all, to me, part of the process. That’s this business. Doesn’t matter if he played or didn’t play in the preseason. If it doesn’t go well early, criticism is going to come. But at the end of the day, I trust the practice process.
“We do things the right way. The tempo of how we practice, the cadence variations and the emphasis of the game situations, so I feel really good about what we’re able to get done in this environment as opposed to relying on preseason games.”
Running back Ezekiel Elliott said it’s unfortunate that the offense’s first unit will not have the consistency of having played together before they face a Buccaneers’ vaunted defense that gave the Kansas City Chiefs offense fits in their 31-9 Super Bowl victory in February.
But he said they have a lot of veteran pieces who will pick the offense up quickly when Prescott returns to full participation in advance of the season opener.
They might not be at their best Week 1 but he likes the chances of an offense that was No. 1 in the league before Prescott went down five games into the 2020 season.
“In our first meeting, [offensive coordinator] coach Kellen [Moore] said our No. 1 goal this year is to be the No. 1 offense,” Elliott said. “Where do see us being Week 1? I don’t know right now. Hopefully, we will be looking pretty good.
“I mean, yeah, they’re a good defense,” he said. “We’ve good guys, too. So I like my guys.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 10:49 AM.
