All hope may indeed be lost for it Dallas Cowboys this season. Or, you know, if it wasn’t already.
The Dak Prescott injury that took the Cowboys quarterback out early in the club’s Week 9 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, moving Dallas to 3-5 on the season, was the absolute last thing the team needed. And it was pretty clear in the aftermath that the prognosis was not positive with rumblings that Prescott would be placed on Injured Reserve as a result of the injury. But it could be even worse than us.
On Wednesday, NFL insider Jane Slater reported that Prescott suffered a “partial avulsion of his hamstring tendon that partially tears off the leg.” In layman’s terms, his hamstring tendon was partially torn from the hip bone. More importantly, Slater noted that recovery from this injury is normally more than four weeks and that the only reason the quarterback hasn’t already received IR is because he’s seeking more medical opinions.
As #Cowboys weighing in on Dak Prescott’s IR status, sources tell me the initial diagnosis is a partial avulsion of his hamstring tendon that partially tears off the bone. I’ve been told it usually takes more than 4 weeks to recover. In some cases, they let it scar over, repair…
— Jane Slater (@SlaterNFL) November 6, 2024
Frankly, nothing about this sounds very positive for the Cowboys in a season that’s already becoming frighteningly thin on positivity.
Unless Prescott returns with a medical that says he can play right away, this really sounds like a case for him to go on the IR and be shut down for the rest of the season. Conservatively, let’s say he were to return in six weeks from this injury – that would put him back in Week 16. What realistic chance is there that the Cowboys have anything at all to play for at that point in the season?
Even if he was healthy, there’s a chance the Cowboys wouldn’t be playing for anything at that point in the year based on how things have gone up to this point. Once again, the team is 3-5 and the vibes couldn’t possibly be more in tatters. Prescott’s injury just makes the decision to pack it in that much more obvious.
While that may be off-putting to some extent, the simple truth is that a Dallas team without Dak Prescott under center has even less of a chance to win football games than they already do. All due respect to Cooper Rush, but that’s quite a departure for the backup. And if Prescott’s injury is one that requires a long recovery time, there’s really no need to rush him back given the state of the franchise.
In an ideal world where we think long term, Prescott would be able to recover steadily from this injury and then return for offseason workouts and training camp ahead of the 2025 season with a new head coach, new offensive coordinator and new defensive coordinator at the helm of the ship.
We don’t live in the ideal world, at least not yet, but this latest update on the Cowboys star’s injury doesn’t leave too much room for optimism about how the rest of his and his team’s 2024 season will play out.
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