I’ve been away so I am a bit late to the party on the recent Cowboys Netflix documentary.
Last night, I got to the episode where Jerry Jones threw an ungodly (at the time) bag at Deion Sanders to pry him away from the 49ers.
Stephen Jones, Jerry’s kid who has never made his own f**king pile, saw the number that his dad was about to hand over to Deion and threw his dad against the wall and threatened to hit him for daring to spend his own money.
Jerry, at the time, wasn’t in worse shape than Joe Biden at the debate and was still calling all the shots for the Cowboys.
He ensured that Deion got his money and the Cowboys got their man.
Normally rich kids are meant to be overwhelmingly generous with their parents’ money, but not Stephen!
He clearly wants to make sure that he personally receives as much of the money his dad has made as possible, and as a result is running the most valuable brand in professional sport like a single mother.
In that context, I started to think about Dak Prescott and the insane career he’s had, and the remarkably consistent success over the course of that career.
Dak was dropped into a nearly perfect situation early in his career.
He was drafted in the same year as Zeke Elliott, behind a dominant offensive line, and throwing to a dominant X receiver in Dez Bryant.
Even despite Jason Garrett’s inevitable mistakes, Dak and Zeke drove the Cowboys to winning the NFC East twice in three years.
After some playoff failures, the Cowboys sacked Garrett and hired Mike McCarthy who lied about going to PFF before running the same execution reliant stuff that made Aaron Rodgers start looking into aliens and any connections they have to the pyramids.
As a fourth round pick, Prescott’s contract was up after three years and he started asking for money.
The Cowboys and Stephen Jones, as we know, are reticent to give anyone more money so they franchise tagged Dak heading into the 2020 season.
In Week 5 of that year, Dak broke his leg.
Eventually, like they usually do unless it’s with a pass rusher with a podcast, Stephen and the Cowboys caved and paid Dak market setting money heading into the 2021 season.
Off a broken leg, Dak played every game and threw for 4500 years and 37 touchdowns on the way to a division title.
By this point, it was the true Dak Prescott show in Dallas.
He’d gone from passenger to driver.
Unlike Russell Wilson, who underwent a similar transition, Dak was able to do it and sustain his success for an extended period.
In 2022, Dak again got hurt early in the season but again dragged his Cowboys to the playoffs and won his first playoff game against the Bucs.
In 2023, the Cowboys were back in the playoffs on the back of Dak’s excellent play even despite heading into the year on the last year of his deal.
Again, he played well, threw for 4500 yards and 36 touchdowns, but again they lost in the playoffs.
In 2024, just as in 2020, Dak was able to wait out Stephen Jones and the cheap Cowboys on the way to getting his contract heading into the year.
He started the season playing well, even though his team was losing, and again in Week 9 injured his hamstring so badly that he needed surgery.
At the end of the 2024 season Mike McCarthy got sacked because the Cowboys are too cheap and not proactive enough to keep paying the good players that need to be there for the scheme to work.
In his place goes Brian Schottenheimer, who, in Jerry Jones’ own words, “is known as a career assistant.”
Now it’s 2025, Dak lost his best offensive lineman in Zack Martin, his defence lost the league’s best pass rusher in Micah Parsons, and his best receiver is currently injured.
Despite that, Dak just completed 31/40 passes for 319 yards and three scores against a Packers defence that added Micah Parsons and went into the game with the third best defensive EPA/play.
Coming off yet another big injury, and with the entire season on his shoulders, Dak has the Cowboys fourth overall in EPA/play and second in success rate.
The run game has been better than expected, but even that is partly Dak who seems to have about as much control over what happens on a given play as Peyton Manning used to.
It seems to be that Schottenheimer will call a play, Dak makes any necessary adjustments, and the Cowboys succeed.
After two big injuries, two major contract disputes with a cheap failson, and numerous controversies that are part and parcel of being the quarterback of the Cowboys, it’s still the Dak Prescott show in Dallas.
I’m not telling you that Dak is a top-5 quarterback that can do everything.
He’s not Tom Cruise, he hasn’t had enough playoff success, and has made a number of big mistakes in key moments that have cost him legacy points.
But given he’s subject to the whims of Logan Roy with a UTI and a group of kids that are just as clueless but also cheap, he’s been an incredibly stable and successful person and player.
He’s Paul Rudd.
You know he’s not going to drive a billion dollar movie, and you know he’s better with a crew than on his one, but when his hands are on the wheel at least you know they’re steady.
I think we need to appreciate that more.