Blogging The Boys
One of the most persistent hot takes about Dak Prescott is that he pads his stats against weak teams and underperforms against quality teams, because he can’t win the big games.
If you look deeper at the root of this particular meme, you’ll quickly find that it’s more than just sloppy thinking and lazy research that leads people down this erroneous path. This storyline lives on in social media, message board, and messenger apps like a ghoul from the Walking Dead stuck in a swamp somewhere in Georgia, and is largely based on a particularly twisted piece of post-rationalization that seems to be very particular to Cowboys Nation:
Prescott can’t win big games, because it’s only a big game if the Cowboys lose. If the Cowboys win, it can’t have been a big game because “they should have won that one anyway.”
Irrefutable fact or vicious slander? Today, we set the stat hounds loose to sniff out what’s what as we slice and dice Prescott’s performance against better and lesser opponents.
Let’s do away with the stat-padding story right away. Since the league moved to a 14-team playoff field in 2021, Prescott’s career passer rating against playoff teams is 99.0, the third best among QBs with at least 10 starts over that period.
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; } body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th { padding: 0px 6px !important; } Passer Rating vs. Playoff Teams, 2021-2025RkPlayerGRate1Lamar Jackson32104.92Joe Burrow30103.63Dak Prescott29****99.04Brock Purdy2197.05Josh Allen2895.76Jared Goff3895.47Matthew Stafford3194.88Jacoby Brissett1594.59Patrick Mahomes3793.910Kirk Cousins2793.211Bo Nix1392.812Justin Herbert3392.013Jordan Love2091.814Baker Mayfield3491.415Geno Smith3090.7Source: ProFootballReference, min 10 startsSo put that story to bed right now.
Prescott’s 99.0 passer rating against playoff teams is only marginally lower than his 99.3 passer rating against all teams (playoff-bound or not) since 2021. Against playoff teams, Prescott plays at practically the same (extremely high) level as he does against lesser opponents.
That becomes even more obvious when you look at the 2025 NFL averages. The NFL average passer rating last year was 91.4. Against playoff teams, the average was 85.8, a drop of -5.6 points. Compared to that, Prescott’s rating only drops by -0.3, so not only is he playing better against playoff teams than most other QBs, his performance drop is also much lower against playoff teams than for other QBs. .
A closer look at the splits by opponent wins in the table below shows that Prescott does have slightly better numbers against the truly terrible teams. But which QB doesn’t? Here’s Prescott’s full breakdown by opponent wins, split into four roughly equal-sized quartiles.
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important; } body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td, body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th { padding: 0px 6px !important; } Dak Prescott Passer Rating, 2021-2025****Opp. WinsGamesCMPATTYDSCMP%YPATDINTPasser Rating NFL Avg. 2025Difference****11+184376654,7800.667.2281690.8 81.1**+9.79-10153905424,4960.728.33312107.7** 88.9**+18.86-8153425333,6370.646.8291392.0** 92.8**-0.90-5225017265,4420.697.54711106.1** 99.5**+6.6Total701,6702,46618,3550.687.41375299.3** 91.4**+7.9**Versus the NFL average, Prescott handily outperforms every win bracket, with one notable exception: we see a significant drop-off against teams that finished the...
