Realism is a small, lonely island in the roiling sea of 2016 sports discourse. “Yeah, but” isn’t what anyone wants to hear. Especially where the still-embryonic career of Dak Prescott is concerned. NFL Week 8 was interested.
The Dallas Cowboys’ rookie quarterback in NFL Week 8 has so far been poised and smart and nimble of both mind and body. He’s third in the league in Total QBR, fifth in yards per pass attempt. The Cowboys are 6-1 with him starting in place of an injured Tony Romo. They were 1-11 without Romo last year.
But Prescott played a bad game Sunday. He just did. He looked like a rookie, ruffled by the Philadelphia Eagles’ attacking defensive front, making questionable decisions and poor throws when things started breaking down. He delivered a victory in overtime in spite of his 19-for-39 fire drill, and that says a lot about a young player. But he is, very obviously, a young player with work to do if he’s to spin his hot start into sustained success.
The quirky note that Prescott was the first rookie to lead a fourth-quarter comeback from a double-digit deficit since Nick Foles in 2012 is packed with warning. Eagles fans once saw Foles as the answer to their prayers. He’s now Alex Smith’s backup in Kansas City. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s not the fate Eagles fans imagined for him in 2012-13. And it’s surely not the fate Cowboys fans currently imagine for Prescott.
This column is called “What we learned and didn’t learn,” and I don’t think we learned much about Prescott on Sunday night. On some level, everyone must have already known that (A) he has what it takes to win his team a close game and (B) he’s a rookie who was not going to paint 16 flawless masterpieces. Even the most entrenched Team Dak loyalist must acknowledge that there’s at least a chance it’ll make sense to give the job back to Romo at some point.
But while none of that necessarily falls under the heading of “What we learned,” it’s nice sometimes to be reminded of how much we still have to learn. Here are some other NFL Week 8 lessons:
Cam Newton has a point
No one weeps for (or with) Goliath, so when a player of Newton’s physical stature talks about not feeling “safe” on the field, there is surely plenty of eye-rolling around the NFL and its fan base. But this isn’t Newton pouting after a loss. (They won.) This is a real concern, articulated previously by teammates, coaches and relatives and now by the league MVP himself.
Newton has been hit 212 times since the start of the 2015 season — 27 more than any other quarterback. The Panthers are one of only two teams in that time whose opponents have not been penalized for roughing the passer. That’s an embarrassing statistical anomaly that can only be explained by a double standard. He runs more than other quarterbacks, sure. But he’s not the only one running.
It’s indisputable that defensive players are targeting Newton. It’s indisputable that they’re getting away with it. We learned Sunday of NFL Week 8 that he’d like both of those things to stop. But the first one won’t until the second does.
The Raiders’ season is Mario Kart
Seriously, Oakland is standing on the gas and doesn’t care what it runs into on the way to the finish line. The Raiders committed 23 accepted penalties Sunday and still beat the Bucs because Derek Carr threw for three-tenths of a mile on 59 attempts, not one of which was intercepted. The defense had 12 men on the field twice on Tampa Bay’s game-tying drive in the fourth quarter, then just nine for the two-point conversion. Think about that. The Raiders literally don’t care how many players they use on defense, so bent are they on getting back to watching Carr’s weekly first-person shooter game.
The Raiders are 5-0 on the road, 1-2 at home in NFL Week 8. Their six wins have come by a combined total of 25 points, only one by more than seven. They have outscored their opponents by 12 points for the season and, if the season ended right now, they would somehow be the No. 2 seed in the AFC. The Raiders make as much sense as David S. Pumpkins. You have no idea what’s going on or whether it’s actually any good, but you can’t stop watching.
The divisions aren’t what we thought they were
Before the season started, the NFC West and the AFC North looked like monsters. Seattle and Arizona were co-favorites in the NFC. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati expected a Baltimore resurgence. These were power divisions, on paper.
But the games aren’t played on paper. They’re played on iPad screens. And on Twitter, on Thursday nights. No team in the NFC West has won since Oct. 17, and only the Seahawks in that division are over .500. The Steelers are a so-so 4-3 and are dealing with a banged-up Ben Roethlisberger. The Bengals’ streak of five straight playoff appearances looks to be in jeopardy, and the Ravens have faded after a 3-0 start. Meanwhile, the entire NFC East is over .500 and the AFC West could put three teams in the playoffs. Long way to go, but the chances of Seattle, Arizona, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh all living up to their lofty preseason expectations are fading by the week.
The Jaguars found a scapegoat
Let’s see … Your franchise quarterback has regressed to the point that he can’t even give his receivers a chance to catch the ball, and your defense gave up 27 points in the first half to the Titans. Fire the offensive coordinator and replace him with the quarterbacks coach? Not feeling this one, Jags. “Hey, it worked for Buffalo!” someone may or may not have said in Jacksonville after Gus Bradley threw Greg Olson overboard Saturday. And sure enough, the Bills did win four straight after firing their offensive coordinator earlier this year. But even that has faded, and odds seem good that Olson won’t be the last one out the door in Duval.
I can understand why coaches and players would be unsatisfied with a tie. And I get why, as a fan, you’d be upset that your team failed to win. But what I don’t get is this idea that a tie is some sort of abomination that should be stamped out with yet another unnecessary change to the NFL’s overtime rules. Washington and Cincinnati tied. So what? It was an excellent game between two teams that have a lot of really good players and were operating out of at least some sense of desperation. We complain about blowouts, but a tie is literally the closest possible game, and yet something is wrong with this as an outcome? Are we that obsessed with winning and losing?
In spite of the fact that one has happened each of the past two weeks, ties are rare enough in the NFL that we can view them as a cute aberration rather than a flaw in the system. They add a different flavor come playoff-scenario time. And given what we know about the toll the game takes on players’ bodies, 15 extra minutes is surely more than enough time to ask these guys to play. Let there be ties. No harm done here.
Short passes are the new black
Four receivers had at least 10 catches in NFL Week 8. Three of them — Green Bay’s Davante Adams, Philadelphia’s Jordan Matthews and Arizona’s Larry Fitzgerald — failed to reach 75 receiving yards. Yes, those three dudes averaged a combined 6.45 yards per pass. Pretty electrifying, right? It’s the second week in a row the league has seen three players with 10 catches and fewer than 75 yards. Don Coryell is rolling over in his grave, but in a league with only about four good offensive lines, it’s tough to run the ball and it’s tough to get enough time to throw downfield. Short passing games aren’t going away anytime soon.
