Dallas Cowboys’ future hopes rest with a rested Dak Prescott and Micah Parsons
Members of the forlorn Dallas Cowboys, still despondent over their quick exit from the playoffs, descended on Los Angeles this week for the ramp up to Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI attempting to say all the right things about their “super” hopes for the future.
Quarterback Dak Prescott says he thinks about the NFC wild card loss to the San Francisco 49ers “multiple times a day” and feels the taste of that defeat will stick with him and his teammates for the rest of their careers.
“It was tough. Expecting to go so much further,” Prescott said. “For it to end so sudden ... it’s a tough one to swallow. There are certain moments and games that stick with players for a long time in their career. I think this was one of them.”
Prescott said the Cowboys had legitimate hopes of reaching the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1995 season. They went 12-5 in the regular season and won the NFC East. They seemingly had all the pieces in place to end the 26-year Super Bowl drought.
“We had everything,” Prescott said. “We thought we were headed in the right direction and had done everything we needed to go get a win. And we didn’t. It was a moment that will stick to you. An opportunity that you will think about for a long time ... did you let it pass?”
But Prescott is also excited to get started again as he will have a full offseason for the first time since before the 2019 season. He held out before the 2020 season in a contract dispute and spent the spring of 2021 rehabbing a fractured ankle.
Not only will the Cowboys get a rested Prescott back in 2022, but they will get a healthy and newly-motivated Micah Parsons.
One of the biggest revelations to come out of Super Bowl week was Parsons telling Bleacher Report that he had hyperextended his knee in training camp and that played with the injury all season.
“It was just something that kept lingering,” Parsons said. “When you hyperextend something it needs rest. But I was like, ‘I can’t take no rest.’”
Now consider that Parsons had the finest rookie season of any defender in Cowboys history.
He became the first player in franchise history to win the Defensive Rookie of the Year and is the first ever unanimous winner, sweeping all 50 votes, while also finishing second in NFL Defensive Player of the Year voting to Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt.
Parsons set a Cowboys rookie record, and led all NFL rookies with 13 sacks, while playing all over the defense as a linebacker and edge rusher.
Imagine the impact a fully-healthy Parsons might have in 2022, to go along with the renewed motivation from that loss to the San Francisco 49ers.
“I didn’t expect to go out like that [in the playoffs],” said Parsons. “That’s one bad thing about the Cowboys, when we lose, everybody is happy we lose. It just builds something inside. I think next year is going to be a different type of hunger for me.”
Parsons also believes he and the Cowboys are just at the beginning of something. They figure to be back in the playoffs next year, and contenders for years to come.
“I do really believe that,” Parsons said. “I see the guys around me and all the guys want it. If we clean the little things, oh my gosh, the sky is the limit.”
