In fairness how does his stats compare to other qb's esp the top level ones?
I’m looking for the thread I posted earlier which breaks it down to some degree, but here is the case FOR Dak regarding his ‘clutch’ ability,
https://sportdfw.com/2019/05/30/dallas-cowboys-clutch-dak-prescott/amp/1
It’s a thread by the author that continued over four articles, not very long. It’s actually well-balanced and makes a strong case for, PRE 2019 Dak. If you decide to read it or not, I’ll actually point out why he doesn’t make the case he thinks he does, especially if we to look back at Dak today.
These numbers are totaled from when he began up until 2018, meaning they are imbalanced towards the first year when Zeke was there dominant. This ties into how wildly inconsistent and awful Dak was going into the fourth and at the same time, which the author points out, THE DEFENSE DOING IT’S JOB. It is also the era of Linehan, NOT MOORE.
The author actually does point out much of this context, but he fails to credit Dak’s numbers were like that, in that the human factor of defenses playing not three quarters but four quarters, against the most dominant OL and RG in the league, meaning defenses get tired and exhausted. He states in the second article:
You might look at this data and think his clutch ability is manufactured. I agree with this claim but not for the reason you think. It’s not Dak who’s “manufacturing” these wins, it’s the Cowboys offensive scheme.
The Dallas Cowboys have made it clear that they live through the run first approach and want to play smash mouth football. Unfortunately, that smash mouth football approach has created unintended consequences...
...The Cowboys love to run the ball especially on first down. This means Dak is hopefully only throwing to move the sticks and no more. If the opposing defense is competent, the Cowboys aren’t able to run in the fourth quarter because team’s learn to game plan against it.
In the fourth quarter, as evident from above, there is no consistency in the running game. With a wildly inconsistent running game at a time where consistency is possibly the most important thing, the Cowboys are having to lean on Dak to break the tie. Fortunately, Dak does that quite well.
Considering the data above comes from wins with game winning drives, the only explanation for these wins would be an effective passing game. Guess who orchestrates that?
Here is a table which compares play in those wins I’d here:
Basically, the author argues that Dak is orchestrating it, but what he fails to understand is that he was able to orchestrate it as a GAME MANAGER in the fourth, when defenses were WORN OUT, while targeting the run. Defenses were essentially DARING Dak to beat them. And because of that Linehan would take some shots with him or defenses were simply getting burned in the process, but big yardage runs after the catch like the Rod Smith 80 yarder and Cole Beasley fifty yarder dump offs. So he would be correct I would argue that Dak was winning games, but he was doing it as a GAME MANAGER, very risk averse in the process. That is what the Dak critics have been saying for years and what they mean by the “eye-test”.
The author also compiled Zeke’s numbers during the fourth which actually re-enforce the point, that Dak was being the game manager, but also another trend, which was that when Dallas wasn’t significantly running well in the fourth, Linehan was still running the ball, to keep the defenses completely honest. And there are also quite a number of games where Zeke still was netting major yardage per carry.
Also, another trend to point out is how awful these teams were anyways. 2018, post Cooper we weren’t winning anything and after Cooper post 2018, we beat bad teams and definitely not even close to beating teams like the Colts who doubled Cooper and we were shut out in the process. Dak’s numbers even with Cooper were completely garbage against zones in 2018, meaning Dak FINALLY started simply taking advantages of situations where corners were sitting on routes with no safety help and that happened the Eagles game when Cooper yelled at Dak that this was what was happening.
Now remember, this is all PRE “Dak-attack” garbage yardage numbers, when he couldn’t even lead a team from a comeback all last year when down by half-time and when we only got one win against a play-off team. In reality, he argues the case FOR Linehan, the guy who was scapegoated by Dez Bryant included as the reason for Dak sucking. And now we are on the era of “snap the ball to Zeke three times in an empty backfield” Moore expecting magic to happen. The worst thing that Moore did was to completely change the play calling to a style that made it even harder for a struggling team to gain some consistency. It was no surprise that as soon as Moore went back to regular play calling even DeNucci moved the ball to a degree in this offense.
And also to point out in our second year of Moore, it’s clear Zeke’s lost a step and this offense with a battered OL is completely in la la land, meaning we wasted years catering to Dak, thinking he could ‘game manage’ us to victory and that when it didn’t work out, he ‘matured’ into this supposed big-armed QB, who still can’t process the field well, as is attested to his top 4 ranking two years in a row, including 2018 which encompasses the numbers here, of drop in QB rating from first to second read progressions of any QB, with not just one good WR, but multiple WRs.
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Dude, this ain't Madden 
