Fans Are All Saying the Same Thing About Cowboys QB Dak Prescott's Brutal Week 6

In his history as an NFL quarterback, spanning nine seasons now, Cowboys star Dak Prescott has never quite played as poorly as he did on Sunday against the Lions at home in Week 6.

It probably should have been obvious there in the first quarter that this would not be Prescott's day. After the Cowboys fell behind, 7-3 on the first drives of each team, Dallas marched down the field with an opportunity to take the lead. On a third-and-5 play from the Lions' 7-yard line, Prescott dropped back to pass and floated a ball to the corner of the end zone.

It was caught. By Detroit's Brian Branch, for an interception and a touchback.

Things never really improved for Prescott from there. Cowboys fans and NFL observers in general went to Twitter/X when the Cowboys fell behind 27-6 at halftime, with the expectation that we'd see a pattern Prescott has repeated in recent outings for Dallas--fall behind early, throw the ball a lot, make a fruitless comeback try and rack up big stats that way even in a loss.

Oh, and get paid a record $60 million per year for it.

Prescott did the big-stats-in-a-fake-rally thing against the Packers in the playoffs back in January. He did it again in the loss to the Ravens in Week 3. Everyone expected the same result once the Cowboys began getting drubbed by Detroit, and the joke was oft-repeated.

While there is certainly truth to that pattern for Prescott recently, fact is, the rally never came, and neither did the empty-calorie stats. Instead, Prescott just threw that interception in the first quarter and continued to struggle from there.

By the time the Cowboys waved the white flag and pulled Prescott for Cooper Rush, he had gone 17-for-33 passing for just 178 yards, with two interceptions. He posted a quarterback rating of 42.2, which ranks as the second-worst single-game rating of his NFL career. That is a span of 120 games.

The joke about Prescott posting good numbers when he's already way behind on the scoreboard is a good one. But there was no punchline on Sunday.