The Dallas Cowboys‘ organizational culture has taken its fair share of lumps in recent years, and quarterback Dak Prescott is getting tired of all of the criticism.
“Yeah, the culture is high honestly, and the culture is great from my standpoint,” Prescott said, via Garrett Podell of CBS Sports. … “My point is that’s something I’ve bragged on and took pride in. So if there’s questions of that or concerns on that, I feel attacked. I’m sure some guys in the locker room do, but at the end of the day, it’s a business, and the way that this business plays out, people don’t get exactly what they want. There’s always sourness I guess you could say somewhere. I don’t want to make anything bigger than that.”
The Cowboys have not made it past the Divisional Round of the playoffs since January 1996 and were most recently routed by the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs a couple of months ago.
Dallas went 12-5 and captured the NFC East division title this past season. It seemed primed to make a Super Bowl run. But then, it found itself behind 27-0 to the Packers—at home—in its first playoff game, and it was never able to recover in a 48-32 loss.
This led to heavy criticism of the Cowboys and Prescott, who threw a couple of interceptions in the defeat. Dallas has logged three straight 12-win campaigns, but it has not led to any legitimate postseason success.
As a result, some have questioned whether or not Prescott is the Cowboys’ quarterback of the future, even though he just led the NFL with 36 touchdown passes and finished second in MVP voting.
Prescott is getting set to enter his ninth year as Dallas’ starting signal-caller, and he has gone just 2-5 in the playoffs over that span.
He has, however, made three trips to the Pro Bowl while establishing himself as one of the league’s better quarterbacks, so while Prescott cannot be completely absolved of blame for the franchise’s playoff failures, there are certainly other reasons for the Cowboys’ struggles in January.
We’ll see what Dak Prescott and Co. can do in 2024.
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