Dak Prescott Needs to Clean Up His Decision-Making

For the third straight week, there was something just a little bit off about Dak Prescott and the Cowboys’ passing game, and it almost led to what would have been an embarrassing loss to the 1-win Texans.

Since Prescott’s return, the passing game has been good but not quite firing on all cylinders. This is particularly true on downfield throws. In fact, on passes thrown 10 yards or more from the line of scrimmage this season, Prescott has just a 73.8 QB rating with 6 touchdowns and 8 interceptions. That ranks in the bottom half of the league. By contrast, he had a 105.0 QB rating on 10+ yard throws a year ago with a 23-9 TD-INT ratio.

It’s not that Prescott hasn’t had any success downfield this season. He actually made several very good intermediate-level throws into tight windows on the Cowboys’ game-winning drive vs. Houston on Sunday. This is more a matter of consistency.

There have certainly been some inaccurate throws, which begs the question of whether or not Prescott’s thumb on his throwing hand (which he broke in Week 1) is an issue. But the primary reason for the inconsistency downfield has been his decision-making.

Over the last 3 games in particular, Dak has put the ball in harm’s way too often, and that’s led to an uncharacteristic 5 interceptions.

Just look at a pass like the one below against the Colts in Week 13 to see what I mean. Here, Indy was playing Cover-3 to the front side and man-coverage to the backside, where Michael Gallup was running an outbreaking route against Stephon Gilmore:

Dak looked to the front side first and then came back to Gallup late. At the moment he decided to throw it, Gilmore was playing outside of Gallup, which is a problem on an out-breaking route:

But Prescott threw it anyway as if Gilmore wasn’t even there:

I would understand attempting that throw if Dak wanted to put the ball on Gallup’s back shoulder and have him sit inside. But he didn’t. He led Gallup:

This wasn’t against a disguised or complex coverage. There was no fooling Prescott on this play. It was just an uncharacteristic bad decision.

There were several other examples of poor decision-making against the Texans in Week 14 as well. As many of you know, I provide Cowboys coverage for The Dallas Morning News. To read the rest of this breakdown and see those throws against Houston, click here.