You might be surprised how successful Dak Prescott has been against the NFC East.
If you want to win your division, you’d better make sure you beat the other teams in your division. And Dak Prescott has done just that. Over the last six seasons, he has compiled a 25-6 record against the other NFC East teams.
After starting out 13-5 from 2016-18, he’s compiled an almost spotless 12-1 record over the last three seasons against the NFC East.
- The Giants somehow managed to win two games against Prescott in his rookie season. But since then, the Giants have been on a nine-game losing streak against Prescott.
- Dak Prescott has won nine out of ten games he has played against Washington. The only loss came in a 2018 game in Washington which the Cowboys lost by three points. With three seconds remaining in the game, the Cowboys lined up to attempt a potential 47-yard game-tying kick, but long snapper L.P. LaDouceur was inexplicably flagged for a false start. The five-yard penalty made it a 52-yard attempt, resulting in kicker Brett Maher hitting the left upright as time expired.
- The Eagles’ record against Dak Prescott is similarly lopsided: Dak Prescott is 7-3 against the Eagles. Of the three losses, one came in the Week 17 season finale in 2016, when Prescott had just eight pass attempts on 15 snaps before making way for Mark Sanchez, and then Tony Romo. Prescott left the game with the score tied at 3-3 early in the second quarter, and the Cowboys went on to lose 27-13, but because Prescott was the starter, the loss goes against his record.
There are those who will say none of the above matters, and the 26-years-without-a-title argument will be used to downplay those listed accomplishments, and that’s all well and good.
But without Prescott, the Cowboys are 1-4 against their divisional opponents.
Coincidentally, 1-4 is also the Cowboys’ record against their divisional opponents without Tony Romo as the starter from 2012-15. With Tony Romo, Cowboys were 14-5 against the division over those four seasons. All of which should give us a pretty good idea of what can happen if you don’t have an NFL-quality QB on your roster.
And this elegantly brings us to how the other NFC East QBs stack up in intra-division matchups:
- Daniel Jones (2019-21): 7-7
- Jalen Hurts (2020-21): 3-4
- Washington’s QB Room (2019-21): 6-12 (Keenum, Haskins, Allen, Smith, Heinicke, Gilbert)
There has not been a repeat division champion in the NFC East since 2004. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that streak ends this season.