The Dallas Cowboys are off to a 3-1 start, and the electric and efficient performance of quarterback Dak Prescott is the pivotal reason why.
And Jimmy Johnson has taken notice.
Some of this is about the numbers. Through four games, Prescott is completing 75 percent of his passes for 1,066 yards and 10 touchdowns, with only two interceptions.
Some of it is about his presence and his leadership, the sort of intangible stuff that helps justify his new $40 million APY contract.
But for Johnson, some of it is about Prescott having rehabbed and rebounded from his devastating ankle injury from a year ago.
“He’s actually playing better than I expected,” the Hall-of-Fame former Cowboys coach Johnson said during a Monday appearance on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd.'' “We were all concerned how he was going to play coming off of injury.
"He hasn’t missed a beat. In fact, he’s playing better.”
We could nitpick and say that for people playing close attention to the Cowboys this spring and summer, the "concern'' about returning from injury was minimal at best. Of course, the issue continues to pop up, non-story though it truly is.
Far more important angles? What Prescott means to the locker room, and bigger than that, to the franchise. He does all of the right things. He says all of the right things.
“We want to be the best,'' Prescott said following Sunday's win over the previously-unbeaten Panthers, which propelled Dallas to a 3-1 record. "We want to win. And we want to win late in the year. And we want to go play in the last game out in California.”
That would be the Super Bowl, in February, at SoFi Stadium. A long way off - but Dak Prescott can envision it, and of course Jimmy Johnson knows a great deal about such things.
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