Dak Prescott Is Surviving the Pressure. That Doesn't Mean Dallas Should Accept It

Prescott has played some of his best football while the Cowboys' protection has shown cracks. His ability to overcome them shouldn't become an excuse to ignore them.

There is a dangerous thing that can happen when a quarterback gets good enough at solving problems.

Eventually, everyone stops noticing the problems.

Dak Prescott stood in Houston on Sunday afternoon and completed 32 of 45 passes for 335 yards. He didn't throw an interception. He converted a fourth down with the game hanging in the balance. Then he drove the Cowboys 74 yards and found CeeDee Lamb for the touchdown that turned a 30–27 deficit into a 34–30 victory.

It was the kind of performance that makes everything around the quarterback look a little better.

Maybe too much better.

Because while Prescott and the Cowboys' offense eventually found their rhythm, there were again stretches when the pocket around him was considerably less comfortable than the final numbers suggest.

And that's becoming something Dallas needs to pay attention to.

The Sack Number Doesn't Tell the Whole Story

Prescott has been sacked six times through four games.

That's hardly an emergency.

He wasn't sacked at all against the Giants, went down twice against Washington, once against Baltimore and three times Sunday in Houston.

If sacks were the only measurement of pass protection, there wouldn't be much of an article here.

They aren't.

Through the first three games, Pro Football Reference charted Prescott as being pressured 26 times on 22.2 percent of his dropbacks. That included 12 hurries and 11 quarterback hits in addition to the three sacks Dallas had surrendered at that point.

Those numbers matter because a pass rusher doesn't need to put Prescott on the ground to affect a play.

Make him move before a route develops.

Force him to reset his feet.

Push him toward another defender.

Turn a potential deep throw into a checkdown.

Make him throw the football away.

None of those plays necessarily becomes a sack.

All of them can still be wins for the defense.

And Prescott has become good enough at navigating some of that chaos that the result can occasionally hide how the play began.

T.J. Bass Deserves Some Context

It would be easy to look across the offensive line, identify whoever is losing individual pass-protection reps and start assigning blame.

T.J. Bass deserves more context than that.

Bass is starting at left guard because Tyler Smith is on injured reserve following thumb surgery. Dallas didn't enter the season intending for Bass to replace one of the best players on its offensive line indefinitely.

That doesn't mean his performance is above criticism. A backup still has to perform when his number is called.

But expectations matter.

When a reserve lineman is forced into the starting lineup and occasionally plays like a reserve lineman, that's a depth problem Dallas has to manage.

When an established starter repeatedly becomes a pressure point, that's something else.

Which brings us to Terence Steele.

The Steele Question Isn't New

Steele isn't a young tackle learning the NFL.

He's 29 years old and in his seventh season with Dallas.

Before the Baltimore game, his pass protection had already been identified as the most obvious place for opponents to test the Cowboys' line. Through two games, he had surrendered three pressures and the only sack charged to a Dallas offensive tackle.

Through three games, PFF had Steele at a 56.2 pass-blocking grade, 58th among 70 qualifying tackles. He had surrendered four pressures and one sack.

Then came Houston.

And once again, Steele's pass protection became part of the postgame conversation.

One difficult game is something an offensive lineman can fix.

A recurring matchup opponents know where to find is something an offense eventually has to account for.

That's the distinction Dallas has to make.

A backup struggling in pass protection is a problem.

An established starter becoming the weak point of the protection is a different kind of problem.

But This Isn't All on the Offensive Line

Here's the necessary "but."

Not every pressure Prescott faces belongs to Steele, Bass or anybody else wearing an offensive lineman's number.

Sometimes a defense sends more rushers than the protection can account for.

Sometimes a receiver doesn't uncover quickly enough.

Sometimes the protection call doesn't match what the defense presents.

And sometimes the quarterback holds the football because he's trying to create a play that isn't there.

That's why simply counting sacks—or even pressures surrendered by individual linemen—can't tell us everything about how well an offense protects its quarterback.

Prescott owns part of that equation too.

But through four games, he's done considerably more to solve Dallas' protection problems than compound them.

Prescott Has Been the Eraser

This is where the story changes.

The point isn't that Dallas has failed Prescott.

The point is that Prescott has frequently prevented imperfect circumstances from becoming disastrous ones.

Against Washington, he threw four touchdowns and finished with a 143.8 passer rating despite being sacked twice.

Against Baltimore, he threw for 276 yards without an interception while Dallas played from behind.

And against Houston, with the Cowboys trailing by three and 2:15 remaining, Prescott didn't need a perfect pocket or perfect circumstances.

He needed a drive.

On fourth-and-4 from the Dallas 32, he found Jake Ferguson for seven yards to keep the game alive. He followed with completions of 15 yards to Lamb and 22 to George Pickens before finding Lamb again for the winning touchdown.

That's what good quarterbacks are supposed to do.

It's also what can make an offense believe its problems are smaller than they really are.

Good Quarterback Play Can Hide Bad Reps

Dallas should be encouraged by what Prescott has done.

It should not become dependent on him doing it.

There will be Sundays when Prescott can't escape the first rusher.

There will be fourth downs when he doesn't find Ferguson.

There will be games when a hit arrives half a second earlier, when the ball comes out differently, or when an opponent turns pressure into a turnover instead of an incompletion.

That's why evaluating protection by asking whether the quarterback survived it misses the point.

The Cowboys aren't trying merely to keep Prescott upright.

They're trying to give one of the most important players on the roster enough time to run the offense they're paying him to run.

And right now, there are enough warning signs to keep watching.

Tyler Smith will eventually return. Bass can return to the depth role Dallas originally envisioned for him. Young players elsewhere on the line can continue developing.

But right tackle is different.

Dallas already has its starter there.

The question is whether the Cowboys can continue treating that position as settled if opponents keep showing them otherwise.

Don't Mistake Survival for a Solution

Four games aren't enough to declare Dallas' offensive line broken.

They are enough to notice a pattern.

Prescott has played very good football through circumstances that haven't always made his job easy. That should increase the Cowboys' confidence in their quarterback.

It shouldn't decrease their urgency about protecting him.

Because there is a difference between having a quarterback capable of surviving pressure and having an offense that should keep asking him to.

Dak Prescott has been good enough to survive Dallas' protection problems.

The Cowboys shouldn't mistake that for proof that the problems are survivable.