[Author note]: Hello, Dave Halprin again from BTB. Today let’s talk about comparing Dak Prescott and Jalen Hurts from a Dallas perspective. Here’s my take.
The NFL is a quarterback league. That’s a pretty well accepted doctrine surrounding the game. If you don’t have at least an above-average quarterback, you won’t succeed. So naturally when teams face each other each week, we tend to look at the quarterbacks first.
Well, the Cowboys and the Eagles will meet this week, so let’s talk about Dak Prescott and Jalen Hurts. I am going to predicate this by admitting I’m not an expert on Jalen Hurts. I watch him twice a year at least, and watch him some additional times in other games when they don’t conflict with the Cowboys (like late-round playoff games and Super Bowls).
One way to make the comparison is to look at the stats. That can also be dangerous because it ends up being easy to cherry pick stats to support your view. I don’t plan on running through a litany of stats here to prove a point. Instead, I’ll submit this up front, Prescott is superior if you just consider the traditional passing game. He tends to average better passing stats than Hurts, he leads the league in QBR this year, and he was second in the MVP voting in 2023. In the regular season of the NFL, Prescott piles up the stats, he’s what they would term a prolific passer.
So on that front, I’m willing to say you’d pick Prescott over Hurts. If I showed you the stats and the passing tape of each player, and you were a general manager who had to draft one or the other with little other information, you’d probably take Prescott.
But now we step into a different realm. Is Prescott the better QB, not just the better passer? This is where things tend to get murky. Things like the post-season, things like the roster around the player, things like other skills that play into being a quarterback. When you get into this realm, there are no absolute locks because everything tends to play off each other. Does Hurts win in the playoffs because he rises to the occasion, or is it because he has a better team around courtesy of an aggressive general manager? And all of that can flip.
Prescott’s really strong regular seasons have been punctuated at the end many times with duds in the playoffs. That’s the reality. And the playoffs are everything in the NFL. Winning in the regular season is required to get to the playoffs, but winning in the playoffs are when myths and legends are made. Hurts has the clear advantage in that area.
Are the Cowboys failures in the recent playoffs Prescott’s fault? I can actually present two opposite arguments, and they both make sense to me on some level.
Prescott has to take some blame. My own personal observation is that Prescott comes into playoff games too jacked up. He seems to have so much adrenaline going that he is sailing passes high and wide to start those games. In many of them, he settles down but the hole gets too big, or the margin is so thin that one good play by the opposition sinks Dallas.
Take that description in contrast to Hurts. I see sideline shots of Hurts sitting on the bench and the man looks catatonic. But maybe that’s his super power. Staying calm under the pressure and delivering in the clutch. Hurts almost never looks rattled to me. Maybe I’ve missed games where his emotions got the better of him, but his demeanor almost always seems the same.
Now here is the part where I absolve Prescott of some blame. Prescott is living almost a carbon copy of Tony Romo’s career in Dallas. Lots of big stats, tons of regular-season success, and then failure in the playoffs. So maybe it’s not Prescott, maybe it’s an owner/general manager who is bad at putting together a roster. On the other hand, how much of Hurts’ success can be chalked up to a general manager who is aggressive and goes out and fills holes regardless of future costs?
But does this argument even make sense? How do you produce a regular-season roster that has a lot of success, only to fall apart in the playoffs, year after year? And how much does pure luck, or an amazing play by the other team, come into play? If Aaron Rodgers doesn’t hit Jared Cook on a third-and-20 to set up the winning FG in the 2016 season playoffs, maybe Dallas wins that game and the whole narrative changes about Prescott.
This isn’t really about trying to make a straight comparison between Prescott and Hurts. You have two different QBs. Prescott is a prolific passer who takes chances and sometimes feels like has to play hero ball because of suspect defenses or other problems. Hurts is less of a risk-taker and stays on an even keel. He also knows how to use his legs to complement his passing game. But most of all, he’s come up big in the games that really matter. That last point can’t be overstated.
So yes, in the strict definition of a QB as a passer, I would take Prescott every time. But if I knew how the results would turn out for both quarterbacks so far, Hurts is the hands-down winner.
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