Through Martin Rogers
FOX Sports activities Columnist
Six months in the past this week, Dak Prescott used to be beneath force. Smartly, extra appropriately, he used to be speaking about being beneath force. He beloved the force, he mentioned. He welcomed it. It introduced the most efficient out of him and the Dallas Cowboys. It created the proper of expectancies.
“I don’t know why other folks label the phrase ‘force’ as the sort of unhealthy factor,” Prescott mentioned.
A couple of days later the Cowboys have been finished, outdueled by means of the San Francisco 49ers within the NFC’s wild-card spherical.
Whether or not it used to be the force or simply the 49ers’ elite protection, Prescott and Dallas have been heading into the offseason, extending a depressing stretch that has noticed the franchise win simply 3 playoff video games prior to now quarter-century.
Now, with a lot of the summer time handed by means of and ideas turning to a contemporary marketing campaign, he’d higher get started loving the force once more, or a minimum of getting pleased with it. As a result of there’s masses coming.
Such is the character of items as Cowboys quarterback, the place expectation and fact don’t all the time well align, and the place the starvation and desperation for good fortune develop with each and every barren yr.
Prescott’s season used to be statistically impressive — with 4,449 yards and 37 touchdowns towards simply 10 interceptions — in a marketing campaign that noticed him go back from an terrible dislocation and compound fracture of his proper ankle.
Numbers-wise, it’s onerous to peer how he will have finished a lot more. And but, when the fireside debates that fill those non-footballing months flip to which avid gamers will lift the weightiest expectancies within the coming yr, Prescott is generally close to the highest of any listing.
A season like the only he simply had — excellent sufficient for a 12-5 report — would go muster just about anyplace else. However Dallas enthusiasts are wiped out. They’ve had the seasons of hope that have been meant to result in extra. The sure indicators. The platform-laying campaigns. The build-and-learn years. Plus, a number of substandard gloom jumbled together.
Now it’s on the level of win or bust. Win, as in actually win. No longer as in double-digit wins, however as in playoff wins.
It’s simply been too lengthy. An excessive amount of hope invested, and for Jerry Jones, an excessive amount of cash spent. Too many false dawns.
Is it truthful for Prescott to shoulder the principle burden of that duty? Rarely. Nevertheless it comes with the territory of being the Cowboys quarterback, and he is aware of it.
While you’re QB of the Cowboys there may be merely not anything about you that individuals aren’t fascinated with. It may well be your love existence. What automobile you’re riding. What your perspectives are on subjects that experience not anything to do with soccer. Heck, they’re nonetheless sufficient in Tony Romo that his victory in a pro-am golfing match final weekend garnered a variety of understand.
At this time, for Prescott, the new matter is his body. The 28-year-old has gotten leaner over the summer time, understanding with a full-time teacher that he in my view employs.
Dak Prescott is feeling excellent going into this season. He instructed newshounds he’s “in the most efficient form I’ve ever been in.” The Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback additionally raved about his fresh travel to Miami with teammates forward of coaching camp. Skip Bayless ponders how a lot this offseason will assist his quarterback’s efficiency.
“A few weeks out (from coaching camp) and I’m in the most efficient form that I’ve ever been in,” he instructed newshounds. “So, it’s time to ramp it up and get going.
“Whether or not it’s holiday or now not, (my teacher) comes with me. We paintings on those actions and stretches. I believe like, because the harm, I’ve educated extra practical than I ever have. So, I see it in my frame, I see it the way in which I transfer and the way the ball is popping out.”
In concept, Prescott will have to be set as much as carry out even more potent this season than final, which used to be the primary degree of a four-year, $160 million contract. Not does he have to move via an intensive pre-workout regimen to make sure his ankle is correctly supported.
His mobility, with 21 months having handed since maintaining the harm, figures to be higher, sufficient that head trainer Mike McCarthy has already spoken about getting Prescott desirous about extra working performs.
Prescott is making the entire proper noises and appears filled with optimism — despite the fact that optimism is a deadly phrase in Dallas and will have to be treated with care.
The oddsmakers are exercising some warning in regards to the Cowboys, stationing them as eighth-favorites to win the Tremendous Bowl, at +1800. The skeptics have issues concerning the departure of most popular vast receiver Amari Cooper and the entire standing of the offensive line.
When Prescott addressed the media there used to be an air about him. A excellent one, undoubtedly, however onerous to explicitly put your finger on.
A sense of self assurance, undoubtedly about that. A way of readiness, impatience possibly, to get issues going?
Prescott says he is in a position for all of it, in a position to unharness his new physicality, in a position for the chance, in a position to check out to make up for the latest unhappiness.
And, probably, in a position for the force, which is all the time there — and till the Cowboys get again to the Tremendous Bowl — all the time rising.
May as smartly learn how to like it, as it’s now not going away.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports activities and the writer of the FOX Sports activities Insider publication. You can subscribe to the day-to-day publication right here.
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