Well, this is something strange and unexpected! Apparently, Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson has a lot of questions to answer thanks to his latest statement (which is largely complementary though) in which he said that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott “didn’t have to win the games” for his team in 2016. He gave this statement when he was asked to comment on Prescott’s appearance on the Doomsday Podcast with Ed Werder and Matt Mosley.
We could hear Pederson saying “He didn’t have to win the games for them. He knew that he had a good defense, a tremendous offensive line, a great runner. He had some veteran players that he could rely on and he learned that early, as soon as he had the opportunity to play and that was from day one.” He also added that “That’s something that a young quarterback sometimes, take … a while to figure out. … The impressive thing is he learned to handle that business that well, utilize the people around him and understand that he didn’t have to go win the game.”
If you are not aware Prescott, age 23, threw for 3,667 yards and 23 touchdowns against four interceptions as a rookie. He made that result better by adding 282 yards and six touchdowns on the ground while leading the Cowboys to a 13-3 regular season and NFC East championship. Unfortunately, Dallas lost its first playoff game, a 34-31 incredible ending, in which Prescott threw for 302 yards and three touchdowns. Thanks to him engineering a pair of touchdown drives team held up good until the Packers won on a last-second field goal.
Besides this statement, Pederson also gave another in which he said that this division is thriving with talent at the quarterback position. “You look at the NFC East over the last few years, the decades, Tony Romo has been in there for many years with Eli Manning,” and added “And now you’ve got kind of the young quarterbacks coming in, even in Washington with Kirk Cousins—is a relatively young quarterback. With Dallas and with Dak, and we’ve got Carson, and the Giants still have a great quarterback in Eli Manning. And really this is a division where all four teams have the guy they want.”
So as you see although the statement is somewhat controversial in the beginning, it is also full of praise as I wrote before. There are great odds that Prescott and Wentz (thanks to their efforts in 2016) will be having a close battle for the title of best quarterback in the division for a long time.
