Dak Prescott followed up a game he’ll remember his whole life with one he’d just as soon forget.
The Cowboys quarterback picked a bad day to have a bad day, going just 23-of-37 passing for 206 yards and a lone touchdown in the team’s 19-12 loss to San Francisco in the divisional round of the playoffs.
But beyond the obviously disappointing postseason exit, Prescott’s poor showing brings to light an unsettling notion.
Cowboys fans watched last week’s four-touchdown, 143.3-passer-rating day in Tampa and saw what Prescott is capable of doing when all the stars align.
But then…
Prescott’s 63.6 passer rating this past Sunday was the lowest of his six total playoff appearances, and it was just the 18th time in his career he’s ended a game with a rating of under 70.0.
The Cowboys’ record in those games: 2-16.
Worst of all? Four of those sub-70 outings have come in the Cowboys’ last 20 games.
They are: last year’s wild-card loss to the 49ers, the 2022 season opener at Tampa, the 2022 season finale at Washington, and this past Sunday’s divisional defeat.
All four still hurt, they’re so fresh.
That all-too-recent history suggests that it’s Dak’s wild-card showing that was actually the anomaly… and what we saw on Sunday was, unfortunately, closer to the inconvenient truth.
While Prescott got to enjoy last week’s surgical performance versus Tampa Bay for just a few days, this latest loss will linger for an entire offseason. The Cowboys were in the game right until the end, but they’ll once again watch the conference championships from home, just as they had for the past 26 years.
“Those guys in that locker room gave it all, both sides of the ball,” the quarterback told reporters from the podium Sunday night. “Put me in a position to go win the game, and I wasn’t able to do that. I put it on my shoulders. When you play this position and you play for this organization, you’ve got to accept that. That’s the reality of it. It’ll make me better. It sucks that I don’t get another shot at it for a long time.”
Most troubling for Prescott and Cowboys Nation, though, were the passer’s two interceptions, building on the theme that will live on as the lead story of the team’s entire 2022 season.
“Just two throws that I can’t have, you can’t have in the playoffs, you can’t have when you’re trying to beat a team like that, you can’t have on the road,” Prescott admitted. “No excuses for it. Those two are…
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