Do you agree with these hot takes from NFL Network?
Fingers are crossed as we gear up for another exciting Dallas Cowboys season! With a new slate comes an opportunity to make new predictions on what might happen in 2022. That’s exactly what NFL Network’s Adam Rank decided to do when he offered up four bold predictions for the Cowboys’ 2022 season and grouped them by the spiciness of each take. Let’s take a look at each of his predictions and determine if we can tolerate the heat.
Mild, but flavorful: CeeDee Lamb won’t be as productive as we think
Rank starts off with a reasonably mild take here as he digs into the Cowboys’ wide receiver situation. Certainly, a lot of fans are extremely high on Lamb as he takes on the team’s WR1 spot after the team traded away Amari Cooper. Even with the veteran Cooper on the roster, the younger Lamb outperformed him in terms of catches per game, yards per game, yards per reception, and catch percentage. It’s easy to get hyped for what year three of Lamb could look like.
On the flip side, with no Cooper commanding attention from the defense, Lamb is going to face some tougher assignments this season. Not only that, but he’ll be without the Robin to his Batman in Michael Gallup for the first part of the season. These factors could put quite a bit of pressure on the team’s rising star receiver, but do you agree with Rank’s prediction?
Spicy: Tony Pollard will be the Cowboys leading receiver
Rank waded in the pool slowly with his first prediction, but then just falls right into the deep end with this one. Pollard as the team’s leading receiver? That just seems absurd as it would mean multiple unlikely things would have to happen. First off, Rank’s mild prediction would need to be right as Lamb would need to have the worst season of his young career. But more than that, Kellen Moore’s usage of Pollard would suddenly have to go from “not nearly enough” to “total overload.”
Don’t get us wrong, we all want to see more Pollard as much as the next guy, but this would require the team to just up and decide that he’s the featured player in the Cowboys’ offense. Is that possible? We guess anything is possible, but don’t be surprised if this hot take burns out by the first month of the season as Pollard’s role is more of the same with maybe a slight uptick in touches.
Three alarm: Dak Prescott is a good quarterback
This is the most annoying of the takes because it just seems like an opportunity to further take shots at Prescott. For realsies, why is this even a take?
While it’s true that Dak is one of the most scrutinized players on the Cowboys (even among his own fanbase), there aren’t many people who believe he’s a bad quarterback. Is he holding this team back? Absolutely not. Does he have what it takes to lead this team to a Super Bowl? That’s the part many of us debate over, but it wouldn’t even be a debate if he wasn’t at least a good quarterback.
Diablo: Mike McCarthy will get fired after losing to the Packers
Rank finishes this thing off in style with a legitimate take that is en fuego. Head coach Mike McCarthy is entering his third season with the Cowboys. His first year was disastrous, but a season-ending injury gave him a good excuse for finishing 6-10. The coaching improved quite a bit last year, particularly on the defensive side of the ball as the Cowboys’ defense went from worst ever in points allowed to the no. 1 team in the league in takeaways. Of course, many are quick to praise the addition of Dan Quinn for that big turnaround as he along with Defensive Rookie of the Year Micah Parsons are the two biggest factors that changed between the two seasons.
If the Cowboys have any showing of a struggle this upcoming season, it could mark the beginning of the end for McCarthy; however, would Jerry Jones fire him in-season? Such a course of action would either require a complete meltdown where the season is lost or the belief that poor leadership is about to let an opportunity slip through their fingers requiring a quick change to save the day. Rank believes that the Cowboys will lose to the Green Bay Packers in mid-November resulting in McCarthy getting the boot.