Cowboys’ Dak Prescott at 30: Full of urgency, QB guarantees a decrease in interceptions in 2023

There’s a longstanding adage that the NFL doesn’t stand for National Football League but rather “Not For Long” and the speed of quarterback Dak Prescott’s career is a testament to that cliché. Prescott went from a 23-year-old, fourth-round pick rookie who entered the Cowboys training camp in 2016 as the third-string quarterback behind Tony Romo — now CBS Sports’ lead NFL analyst — and Kellen Moore — now on his second NFL offensive coordinator gig with the Los Angeles Chargers after spending the last four seasons as Prescott’s OC from 2019-2022. He’s presently in his eighth camp as the Cowboys starter with 166 career passing touchdowns, the second-most in team history behind only Romo and one ahead of Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman’s 165. On Saturday, he turns 30, which provides Prescott both a moment of reflection and an even sharper focus going forward as he enters the second half of his professional football career. 

“Yeah, it goes by fast,” Prescott said Thursday. “To be turning 30, going into my eighth year, and playing the game that I love at the most elite level, it’s something you dream about for a long time. It just goes by fast. That’s my message to these young guys. When we [Prescott and his receivers and tight ends] were on a trip to Atlanta [working out as an offense before training camp], that’s when it hit me. I was out there working with the receivers and someone asked ‘who’s the oldest guy out here?’ I had my head down taking notes, not even thinking to look up and then I heard a couple coughs and my name. I looked up and everyone was giving me crap for being the old guy. I got [wide receiver Brandin] Cooks beat by a couple of months. It just happens fast with the [NFL] turnover. I think it just adds to the urgency, but more so blessed to be celebrating my 30th doing what I love.”

The upcoming 2023 season hits Prescott differently than years past and not just because his age starts with a three instead of a two. Following the release of three-time Pro Bowl running back Ezekiel Elliott and the front office letting cornerback Anthony Brown walk in free agency, Prescott is the last remaining Cowboy from his 2016 draft class, which was compromised of nine players. 

“I guess after [those] last two departures, it did hit me,” Prescott said Thursday, speaking after the Dallas Cowboys’ second practice of training camp. “Yeah, it’s interesting. It just speaks to urgency. Yeah, I’m blessed to play this game, blessed to be in this organization. But as you see, it’s a business, it’s not forever for everybody. And I know what I want to do. I know what I want to accomplish. I know what this team wants. And it’s about that now.”    

Prescott’s top target, 2022 Second-Team All-Pro CeeDee Lamb, was one of those pass-catchers, who at 24 years old, got a kick out of messing with his quarterback ahead of his looming entrance to his third decade of life.  

“Oh, I know,” Lamb said Thursday when asked if he was aware of Prescott’s 30th birthday coming around the corner. “He hates to hear it, but he’s an old man. I told him if anybody’s 30-years-old you wouldn’t be able to guard me right? I was talking about defensive players, and Dak said ‘easy I’m about to be 30 soon.’ I said he better keep warming that shoulder up because soon enough I’m going to be able to out run it. He’s old. He doesn’t act old, but that big 3-0, that’s big in this league. Obviously you have guys like Aaron Rodgers in this league [entering a season in which he will turn 40 in December], and he’s a great. You have Tom Brady who played until he was 45. Plenty of guys don’t do that, but I see Dak doing that.” 

Prescott agrees with Lamb’s assessment as he puts in regular maintenance work on his body, before and after practice, to ensure he can avoid injuries that will cause him to miss extended amounts of time like he did a year ago with a thumb injury (five games missed) and in 2020 with a fractured and dislocated ankle (missed final 11 games). 

“I feel great, knock on wood,” Prescott said. “I would say physically what I’m capable of doing with my strength, throwing the ball and all that, by far better than I was at 23 coming into the league or even two years ago. As far as dealing with things, as you get older, you feel that at times. When I had an ankle injury like I did, it’s always a continuous check-up, so I’m always working on that. It’s kind of half-and-half I guess you could say.”

His head coach Mike McCarthy vouched for his quarterback’s dedication to himself and the team by working just as hard on his body as he does his on-field, football work. 

“Dak is extremely consistent,” McCarthy said Thursday when asked about the work Prescott does to keep his body prepared to play. “What I see is his consistency. The ability to have a consistent plan in the prehab puts you in much better situation if you have an unfortunate injury.”

New Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Brandin Cooks, who has played with aging quarterbacks in Drew Brees and Tom Brady as well as youngsters like Davis Mills of the Houston Texans throughout his nine-year career believes Prescott still has it.

“We talk about I’m old, but we have to give Dak a hard time,” Cooks, who turns 30 on Sept. 25, laughed on Thursday. “This 30 nowadays with everything going on, he’s still moving pretty fast. The resources that we have now versus back then is astronomical. If you pay attention to your body, take care of your body, invest in you body, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to stick around for a long time. I don’t get into comparing, but what I see about Dak is how he’s able to lead. I was talking to some of the guys the other day, leading — you just can’t fake it. The way he leads is so authentic, you would follow him anywhere. That alone right there is the number one key you have to have in a quarterback. He has that and more.”

While Lamb cracked jokes about Prescott’s extensive time in the NFL, he believes with conviction that Prescott will have the ability to throw him the football all year long for the foreseeable future. 

“He’s a heavy sweater,” Lamb said when asked about Prescott’s maintenance routines. “It’s like he jumps in and out of pools pre-practice. He does a great job of keeping himself up. I pray I keep him all 17 games and maybe 20. Him tuning himself up and keeping his body intact, I don’t see no questioning that.”      

Some NFL quarterbacks are known to take some extended time  off from throwing in the offseason. McCarthy’s last Pro Bowl pupil in longtime Green Bay Packers quarterback and future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers, now a New York Jet, has said in past interviews on “The Pat McAfee Show” that he will take a few weeks off in between OTAs and training camp from actually throwing the pigskin around. Not Prescott. 

“I’m still a volume guy,” Prescott said. “It’s not so much just using your arm, but using every part of your body right. That’s how Tom Brady was able to play so long. All that has started to take over in my body, so my arm isn’t getting tired. With all the young guys we have, we need reps. I’m out there using my conditioning as part of my throwing. It’s not just running to run, it’s about functional training. The best way for me is to throw the ball, put myself on the move and in those situations to make sure I’m feeling more comfortable with each throw I make. Especially to get on the same page with these young guys. As long as I can keep throwing this way and my arm doesn’t bother me, I’ll be a volume guy.”

The soon-to-be birthday boy has been a “volume guy” in each of his last two NFL season as well. In 2021, the volume was positive as his career-high 37 touchdown passes set the Cowboys’ single-season record. In 2022, Prescott became the first player in NFL history to co-lead the NFL in interceptions (15) despite missing at least five games. 

His final two games last season also highlighted Prescott’s ability to fill up the stat sheet in both fantastic and worrisome ways. In the Cowboys’ 31-14 Wild Card Round win at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Prescott lit up the scoreboard. He threw for 305 yards and four touchdowns (tying the Cowboys’ single-game playoff record) while completing 25 of his 33 passes. That resulted in Prescott registering a 143.3 passer rating, the highest in a single playoff game in team history when throwing a minimum of 20 passes. He also ran for another score, giving him five total touchdowns — the most in a playoff game in Cowboys history. The next week, Prescott threw two interceptions to only touchdown while completing 23 of his 37 passes in 19-12 loss at the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Divisional Round.  

“Only thing that I can do is get up and keep swinging,” Prescott said. “That’s exactly what I’m gonna do every chance that I get. So every opportunity to come out here and practice is about being purposeful. It’s about understanding and making sure the young guys understand that we’ve got to be purposeful and intentional in everything that we do, because we don’t know when these reps are going to come up. Me personally, and this team, we’ve been bit by that the last couple of years when we needed it. It’s just about not taking a play for granted, not taking a moment or walk-through for granted, communicating our asses off. Just putting our best foot forward each and every day.”

With Cooks providing him a reliable top two receiving options alongside Lamb and No. 3 receiver Michael Gallup, the 27-year-old the Cowboys signed to a five-year, $57.5 million contract in the 2022 offseason shortly after tearing his ACL at the end of the 2021 season, feeling “springy again” now that he is roughly a year-and-a-half removed from his ACL injury, Prescott has the tools to produce more high-level volume numbers going forward. For Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, that’s a must.

“What I expect is not the unexpected. What last year represented relative to turnovers was unexpected,” Jones said Tuesday. “I expect to see what we expect from Dak, which is don’t turn the ball over, be protective of the ball. When I think of Dak, that’s the first thing that comes to my mind. That’s what he does good.”    

To be fair to Prescott, his career interception rate is two percent, which is tied for the ninth-lowest figure in NFL history. New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers has the lowest figure all-time, 1.4%, for reference. However, Prescott threw picks on 3.8% of his throws while battling through a right thumb injury on his throwing hand and a lack of receiving options outside of Lamb in 2022. With those issues behind him, Prescott declared his turnover-plagued 2022 is something that won’t be repeated, despite tossing a couple picks in the first two practices at camp. 

“Once again, just have to look at what the play is, look at the read and understand that it is football,” Prescott said. “[Wednesday’s interception[ was tough and [Thursday’s interception] was 50/50, maybe the ball gave them a little more percentage, I guess. But that’s part of it. I’m not gonna stop being aggressive. … I am going to lessen my interception numbers. That is a guarantee. We’re trying to gain chemistry here and we’re trying to be aggressive. That’s who our coach is and that’s who I am. That’s the confidence I’ve gained in myself and I’ve worked so hard to be able to have this confidence and be able to make the throws that I’m making. That’s just two, right? If it continues every day, come back to me and I might change my mood a little bit.”

Some of those two mistakes are on the quarterback, of course, but every day in practice he’s going up against a defense that has led the NFL in takeaways, 67 since 2021, in each of the last two seasons.

“Just in these two days, I’ve felt it,” Prescott said. “They’re good. They communicate well and that’s where it starts. They know each other. They know the call and that the call that they’re getting from DQ [defensive coordinator Dan Quinn]. They feel confident in the man next to them and that allows them to play fast. That’s going to make it tough against any offense. It’s great for us to be able to against them every day, that’s iron sharpening iron. They’re impressive… It makes it fun.”

If the Dallas offense can have as much on-field, in-season fund as their defensive counterparts, then the 2023 Cowboys could be the best team of Prescott’s career and break Dallas’ Divisional Round playoff ceiling. The current titleholder for the best Cowboys squad in the Prescott Era is the 2016 unit from his rookie year. The Cowboys went 13-3 games, winning the NFC East and securing the No. 1 seed in the NFC. Prescott earned the NFL Rookie of the Year, throwing 23 touchdowns and only four interceptions.  That early success fooled the quarterback into thinking winning is easy in the NFL, something he very clearly knows isn’t the case. However, if things come together the way they could in 2023, maybe it will feel that way again.

“The way my rookie year went, it kind of messed my head up,” Prescott said. “I didn’t think that it was going to be as hard as it’s been the six years following, but I don’t want anything that’s easy. I’ve never gotten anything easy in my life. I don’t ask for anything and I’m damn sure not going to start now.”