• Dak Prescott is next up for a contract extension: His price tag is only increasing after recent deals for quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love.
• Playoff struggles could make it a tough decision for the Cowboys: Prescott's career PFF grade in playoff football is just 70.4, including a 66.3 passing grade. His grade in the regular season is 91.2 with an 89.0 passing grade.
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Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The cost of a new Dak Prescott contract is only increasing, and at some point, the Dallas Cowboys have to ask themselves if it’s worth the cost.
After massive extensions signed by quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love to stay with the Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers, respectively, Prescott’s deal remains conspicuously absent, and that may be because his failings to date reflect that of the team as a whole.
Dallas has put together three consecutive 12-win seasons but has failed in the postseason each time. Once a dynasty, America’s Team is now better known for memes about playoff disappointment. An entire generation of Cowboys fans wasn’t even born the last time the team played in and won a Super Bowl.
Unless you’re inking Patrick Mahomes to a contract extension, there’s something to be scared of for every quarterback. Whether it’s age, injury history, sample size or consistency, there are reasons to talk yourself out of assigning such a giant percentage of your salary cap to any one individual. In Prescott's case, that concern also aligns with the one the franchise has been battling for some time now: postseason failure.
Oftentimes, narratives like that don’t actually have any basis in reality; they are constructs born of paying attention only to results rather than individual performance. A quarterback can play fantastic football and still lose in the playoffs.
When Mahomes and the Chiefs did the impossible in 13 remaining seconds against the Bills, Josh Allen had just given his team the lead, capping a 329-yard, four-touchdown performance that earned him a 92.2 PFF game grade. But his defense couldn’t close it out, and so it just got added to the list of postseason disappointments.
Prescott, however, does have a poor postseason resume individually. His career PFF grade in playoff football is just 70.4, including a 66.3 passing grade. His grade in the regular season is 91.2 with an 89.0 passing grade.
Dak Prescott | Playoff PFF Grades by Season
In postseason play, Dak averages half a yard less per pass attempt and has a worse turnover-worthy play rate to go along with a worse big-time throw rate. (3.0% to 3.5% and 4.5% to 3.5%, respectively).
By every conventional measure, Prescott has been a significantly worse quarterback in the playoffs than in the regular season.
This isn’t necessarily uncommon. Of the 14 quarterbacks who recorded at least 40 dropbacks in last season’s playoffs, every single one earned a worse PFF grade than their regular-season baseline. Most, however, did not suffer the magnitude of drop-off that Prescott has over his career, and several were just about in line with how they had played in the regular season.
As the gold standard for quarterbacks in today’s NFL, it won’t be a shock to know that Mahomes has consistently maintained an elite level of play in postseason football, even when badly injured in the process. His career PFF passing grade in the postseason is an elite 90.4, and his turnover-worthy play rate actually drops by a full percentage point with everything on the line.
Obviously, most quarterbacks aren’t Mahomes, who is going to go down as one of the best to ever play, but the problem for Prescott and the Cowboys is that Mahomes is now the standard and the kind of opponent you run into in postseason play.
Dallas may not have to contend with Mahomes and the Chiefs until they make it back to the Super Bowl, but the opponents are, generally, a step above in the playoffs, and if your quarterback isn’t able to maintain his level of play once he gets there, that’s a problem.
That dilemma is only magnified if you are paying that quarterback more money than any other player in the game.
If we look at Prescott’s total body of work, he has justified a monster quarterback contract. Statistically, he was elite last season, is coming off his best year and, at 31 years old, is firmly in his prime. But he has only added to a growing body of disappointing playoff work, the area of total focus for the Dallas Cowboys in recent years.
If Prescott can’t get closer to his regular-season performances once January football arrives, maybe the Cowboys should draw a financial line in the sand and look to alternatives.
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