Dak Prescott is heading into his 11th NFL season as the unquestioned face of the Dallas Cowboys. Sam Howell sits behind him on the depth chart, with Joe Milton rounding out the room on the practice squad.
Jerry Jones and head coach Brian Schottenheimer seem clear that if the Cowboys are getting back to the promised land, it’s happening behind their $240 million quarterback. But with all that confidence in Prescott now, a story from his very first preseason as a rookie has resurfaced.
Jerry Jones and Michael Irvin recently revisited that stretch, a moment when Dallas suddenly had to rethink everything at quarterback. Tony Romo suffered a vertebral compression fracture in the first quarter of the Cowboys’ Week 3 preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks back in 2016.
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Prescott entered on third-and-8 and scrambled for 12 yards, and Ezekiel Elliott added five more before Dallas punted from its own 45-yard line. The defense got the ball right back, and Prescott made it count, driving the offense 81 yards on seven plays and capping it with a 17-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jason Witten.
He finished 17-of-23 for 116 yards through the air, adding 12 yards on the ground. That touchdown put Dallas ahead 7-0, and the mood around the building changed fast.
Jones and Irvin had been sitting with dull faces just minutes earlier, still processing the loss of their veteran quarterback, when Prescott’s throw to Witten gave them their first real reason to believe.
During a recent episode of Irvin’s Netflix show, “The White House Pod,” Jones opened up about what almost happened next, and Irvin reminded him how close the Cowboys came to going outside the building for answers.
“We were talking about bringing in another backup, a veteran backup, and I said, ‘No.’ We were tired of backups, and I told you, ‘Look at what Dak did. Dak gives us hope.’ Bringing in another guy wasn’t going to give us hope,” Irvin said.
That call to stick with Prescott instead of chasing a veteran arm became the foundation of the Cowboys’ offense for the next decade. Prescott has been QB1 in Dallas ever since, and Jones is hoping the same quarterback who gave the franchise hope as a rookie can finally deliver its first Super Bowl in more than 30 years.
The Cowboys open the 2026 regular season on the road against the New York Giants.
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