Dak Prescott played a bad game yesterday. He threw two interceptions. His passes generated only 5.4 yards per attempt (context: the NFL range by quarterback over the season stretched from 6.1 YPA to 8.9 YPA). The 49ers defense gave him fits, enough fits that the 49ers’ own quarterback—our beloved Brock Purdy, Iowa State legend and reliably cheerful face—had the dumbed-down task of avoiding disaster, a task he completed after a few heart-stoppingly close calls. With a regular Brett Maher, the Cowboys might have covered, scoring 16 points while Prescott threw just one pick, given Mike McCarthy would have likely opted to kick the 53-yarder late in the 2nd quarter. The YPA wouldn’t have changed much, though, and the result would have still been a loss. The interceptions were the daggers, but the overall performance was what lacked. San Francisco stuffed the run and Dallas didn’t answer with the pass.
Dak Prescott had a strange year. He was hurt for about a third of it, and when healthy, he was uninspiring. From The Ringer, a rundown on the quarterback’s advanced stats over the 2022-23 campaign:
“He was 21st in PFF’s offensive grades, 12th in ESPN’s QBR, 11th in Next Gen Stats’ completion percentage over expectation, and eighth in expected points added per play. Cut through all those numbers—all those highs and lows—and you get this: Dak Prescott was somewhat above average this season.”
‘Somewhat above average’ can, in the right circumstances, win you a Super Bowl. It can win you two thirds of your games, which is how many Dallas won with Prescott healthy. ‘Somewhat above average’ does these things, though, in the way the 49ers are trying to win with Purdy: By not getting in the way of the things you do well. Dak Prescott had the second-highest cap hit of any player in the NFL this year. If a team is spending that much money on their quarterback, that quarterback must be capable of leading them to big win after big win, not serving as just a quiet cog in a potent machine. Prescott is somewhere between those two places on the spectrum. At his best, he puts up numbers like those of Patrick Mahomes and puts games away like Joe Burrow or Josh Allen. At his worst, he’s an outright liability. Which gets at the real problem for the Cowboys:
Dak Prescott is good enough that unless you’re making an aggressive, sensational trade, it’s entirely unreasonable to think you can find and develop a better quarterback than him. Dak Prescott is bad enough, however, that unless he rolls doubles four times in a row, he isn’t going to lead a team to a Super Bowl by himself. Put more simply: The Cowboys can’t expect to find anyone better than Dak Prescott, but Dak Prescott needs a better supporting cast than the Cowboys can now afford. They’re stuck in the middle. With each other.
Brock Purdy, Jalen Hurts, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow
With all due respect to Jalen Hurts, I kind of wish we had the Bucs playing the 49ers so we could watch a bunch of graphics next weekend with Purdy’s face alongside some of the best in recent memory. Look at the little man go. And it isn’t even Brocktober!
There are a number of misconceptions to correct about Brock Purdy, and one is the ‘little man’ piece. Brock Purdy looks very small when he’s in the pocket, like Jerry preparing to drop a mallet on Tom’s toe. He’s actually only an inch shorter and five pounds lighter than Aaron Rodgers. He’s not only a large man, but he’s close to average size for a quarterback. Another is, as we wrote last week, that he wasn’t dominant at Iowa State. He was good. He was the best quarterback Iowa State’s ever had. That also isn’t saying as much as it says at a lot of schools. When forced to win games, he sometimes won them and sometimes lost them. When found amidst an offense that was grooving, he moved the sticks and didn’t mess things up.
It was encouraging to see how the Niners and/or Purdy adapted to the Cowboys’ pressure after those two early sacks, but the Eagles are another beast entirely. Purdy has not yet seen the likes of that pass rush. For the moment, incredibly, he’s still here, and there’s a possibility of an all-Big 12 Super Bowl, which would be a big come-up for the conference. (Note: I forgot all about Jalen Hurts playing at Oklahoma for a minute on the first draft of this. We’re leaving it in, I think I’ll always remember him as an Alabama guy.)
The Bengals Might Be the Best Team
This is selective, but the Bengals have won ten games in a row, and over their last thirteen they’re 12-1. Of the other remaining teams, only the 49ers can match that, having won their last twelve and matching the 12-1 mark over the last thirteen. Kansas City is 11-2 over the stretch. Philadelphia is 10-3. Those are all great numbers, and there are stories behind each of them: The Eagles were missing Jalen Hurts when they lost to the Cowboys and the Saints. Kansas City’s own losses only came to the Bills and Bengals. Really, it just depends where you want to draw the line. Because however you want to evaluate the last three months, there was no more impressive performance this weekend than Cincinnati’s. The Bengals went to Buffalo and wiped the snowy floor with a very good football team.
The Bengals dominated in Buffalo. They led by two scores for the majority of the game. They nearly doubled up the Bills on first downs recorded. Just when their opponent looked to be getting back into it, they rattled off a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive. They covered the spread by 23 points.
Can you throw out the beginning of the year? I don’t know enough to know the answer to that. But if the Bengals are capable of what they showed in Buffalo, it’s hard to quarrel with betting markets, where if you remove three points from the home team, Cincinnati’s standing two points better than Kansas City, and San Francisco’s half a point better than Philadelphia. Again: The Bengals were the most impressive team on a football field this weekend. And the Eagles won a playoff game by 31.
Kansas Has a Problem
While Philly was beating up on everything the late Giants held dear, college basketball had another chaotic Saturday. Our latest impression of the landscape had been that there were three teams it wouldn’t be surprising to see win the NCAA Tournament. All three of those teams lost.
The losses were different in nature. UCLA lost a road game by two to a good team. It was troubling in that UCLA hasn’t beaten anyone all that good, but it doesn’t really change our impression of them. They lost a tough road game. That happens to well over 99% of college basketball teams each year. Houston’s loss was worse, coming at home against sub-NIT Temple, but it didn’t really upset our perceptions of the Cougars as much as it confirmed our suspicions: This offense can get in funks that last entire games. The team is good enough that this can turn out fine, but if it happens severely enough over those specific six games in March and April, the lights go out.
Kansas’s loss was the really bad one, because it was the one that made us question whether Kansas is really good enough to win it all. Houston’s good enough, their question is consistency. UCLA’s good enough and consistent enough, their question is why they haven’t beaten anyone better than Kentucky. Kansas played with fire for the first three weeks of Big 12 play and we thought it might be an asset. “Battle tested,” and all that. Then, we watched their house burn down as TCU—TCU who is tied for fifth place in a ten-team league—ran around with a torch. Kansas got crushed. I don’t think we can group them with Houston or UCLA anymore. Not right now.
In the SEC, Tennessee and Alabama impressed. Beating up LSU on the road isn’t incredible, but it’s better than the alternative, and Tennessee did it. For Alabama’s part, the Tide went into a madhouse in Columbia and rolled through Mizzou, leading by ten at the half and only stretching it from there. Alabama has questions. The Tide turn the ball over, they’re young, they’re reliant on the three and they don’t shoot it or anything else very efficiently. Aside from maybe Houston, though, nobody shares these guys’ ceiling, and when your only losses came to UConn and Gonzaga, it’s hard to complain too much about consistency.
In the Big Ten, Purdue remains on a level of its own. We caught enough of the Indiana game yesterday to confirm that Hoosier heads are pointed back in the right direction, but Purdue’s the story, and after surviving Maryland, the Boilermakers lead the whole Big Ten by two and a half games nearly halfway through conference play. The defense, meanwhile, is getting a lot better. The trend is accentuated by how slow they play—holding each of their last twelve opponents below seventy is partly a product of pace—but this is not last year’s team, and this is not Adam Morrison. Purdue isn’t great defensively, but their defense ranks higher than UCLA’s offense does, and even after they notched just 52 in Tucson, we aren’t complaining about UCLA’s offense.
In the Big East, UConn got back to .500, bludgeoning Butler, so congrats to them on that, I guess. They’re a better team than Marquette, but it’s getting close. The Golden Eagles outperformed them by 22 points in Newark in consecutive games, and if Wednesday’s contests go as expected, we’re set to see a three-way tie atop the league with UConn three losses back.
Virginia got another ACC win, beating Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, while Clemson continues to occupy that rare space where winning the league’s regular season title wouldn’t be a shock and neither would making the NIT. That speaks very poorly of the ACC’s depth. UNC’s getting its legs back under it, but KenPom has Clemson and Virginia tying for the title, and it simultaneously says Clemson is notably worse than Northwestern. There is a way to equate Virginia and Northwestern there, and it’s silly, but the fact it’s there, again, is bad news for the ACC.
In the WCC, Gonzaga continued to struggle, scoring 99 at Pacific but allowing 90. Questions there are legitimate. Saint Mary’s did not struggle, obliterating Santa Clara in mechanical fashion. How the hell did the Gaels lose all those non-conference games? As a certain governor of the Roman province of Judea said, What is truth?
With Alabama and Purdue well-rounded enough and no unquestioned teams in the country, we’re elevating them alongside Houston and UCLA. Nationally, then, our categories are now as follows, with Kansas jumping two whole steps down:
Teams It Wouldn’t Be Surprising to See Win the NCAA Tournament: Houston, UCLA, Alabama, Purdue
The Questioned: Tennessee
Good, Not Great: UConn, Kansas, Saint Mary’s, Marquette, Virginia
That Was Coming for Iowa State
Things looked great in the first half. They did not end great.
It’s only a two-point loss, it was on the road, Oklahoma State’s about as good as Iowa. And Caleb Grill was hurt. If the goal was making the NCAA Tournament, this loss wouldn’t matter, but because the goal has changed to winning the Big 12, the loss hurts.
Still, with Kansas exposed as badly as Kansas was exposed, the weekend was a net positive for ISU. They’re one game back of Kansas State and tied with both the Longhorns and the Jayhawks. If they were a game back of either of those two? Bad, but since it’s Kansas State, it feels fine. Win tomorrow night and it’s a tie atop the Big 12 again as the league breaks for the Big 12/SEC Challenge. The big question is whether the Cyclones can win without Grill tomorrow. It would be nice to give his back a full week off, or use him sparingly, but it’s hard to win this conference without beating Kansas State at home. That isn’t a knock on Kansas State, necessarily, it’s just how the league is built right now. It’s a great, great league.
In other news, T.J. Otzelberger picked up a commitment on Saturday from 6’5” Dwayne Pierce, a high school junior out of New York City and the 104th-ranked recruit on the 247 consensus. With Pierce in the fold, Iowa State’s 2024 class is ranked third in the country, and while that doesn’t account for transfers, it’s poised to be the second top-ten recruiting class in a row. T.J. Otzelberger can coach. T.J. Otzelberger can recruit.
**
What’s happening today:
College Basketball (the big one)
- 9:00 PM EST: Kansas @ Baylor (ESPN)
College Basketball (the medium ones)
- 6:30 PM EST: Wisconsin @ Northwestern (BTN)
- 7:00 PM EST: Duke @ Virginia Tech (ESPN)
- 9:00 PM EST: New Mexico @ Nevada (CBSSN)
NBA (best game, plus the Bulls)
- 8:00 PM EST: Atlanta @ Bulls (NBA TV)
- 10:30 PM EST: Memphis @ Sacramento (NBA TV)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Florida @ NY Rangers (ESPN+)
Premier League
- 3:00 PM EST: Tottenham @ Fulham (USA)
Australian Open
- 7:00 PM EST: ESPN+ coverage begins
- 9:00 PM EST: ESPN2 coverage begins
