Blogging The Boys
Cowboys’ Prescott feels the disrespect
Nothing gets the timeline buzzing in the dog days of the offseason quite like quarterback discourse. It doesn’t matter who you are, who you root for, or even whether or not you watch any games; you can always find someone with an extra spicy take on which quarterbacks are good and which are bad.
On Tuesday, it was John Breech of CBS Sports who decided to pour gasoline all over the topic and flick a lit match. The first order of business in his weekly newsletter was determining the most overrated and underrated quarterbacks in the NFL and, well, Breech understood the assignment.
He listed Prescott as the most overrated quarterback and offered up a bunch of reasons that are used almost daily in every corner of the Internet to make the same argument:
Overrated: Dak Prescott (Cowboys) — It’s not that Prescott is bad. He really isn’t. You don’t last nearly a decade as the Dallas Cowboys’ starter, with seven playoff appearances, by accident. But that Cowboys brand magnifies everything, and the simple truth is that Prescott is the latest face of an organization that’s routinely failed to make deep-playoff noise out of the NFC. He’s regularly considered among the NFL’s top 10 or so starters, he’s survived multiple coaching changes and he’s repeatedly landed lucrative extensions in Dallas. He’s also struggled to stay healthy and/or control the ball in three of his last five seasons, and he enters Year 10 with just two postseason victories to his name.
Injuries. Lack of postseason success. He plays for the most visible brand in football.
None of which are things that Prescott himself solely controls, or things that actually reflect his individual abilities or performance. Breech even highlights that Prescott has seen multiple coaching changes in his career, hinting at an unstable environment surrounding him, but doesn’t seem interested in factoring that into Prescott’s evaluation here.
Not only did Breech go for the low hanging fruit of crowning Prescott as the most overrated quarterback in the league, he doubles down on what some might dub ragebait by listing Prescott’s rival, and reigning Super Bowl MVP, Jalen Hurts as the league’s most underrated quarterback:
Underrated: Jalen Hurts (Eagles) — Wait, really? The reigning Super Bowl MVP is underrated? It sure seems like it. You won’t find anyone who puts up a fight when you mention Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen in lists of elite quarterbacks. Throw Hurts’ name in there, however, and all of a sudden you’re clawing for your life. But since when did gaudy stats and pretty highlights mean more than, you know, winning games that matter? Hurts played more of a background role in the Philadelphia Eagles’ historic Super Bowl LIX run, but too many people forget he’s now given two championship-caliber performances at that stage. And he’s still just 26! He may not be flawless, but he’s close to inevitable.
That’s right, the guy who just won a ring and...
