Dak Prescott appears ready to trust himself after recovery from injury.
An old adage in sports is that players have a hard time trusting themselves after injury. It isn’t apples to apples, but when you touch a hot stove with your hand and get burned, then the next time you are near the stove in similar circumstances you are bound to have a higher level of caution, right? Pain is a teaching tool, and when we apply this general principle to football, it stands to reason that after a player hurts something doing a particular activity that they will carry a bit of hesitancy towards doing it in the future.
Among the most important things encircling the Dallas Cowboys this season is the health of quarterback Dak Prescott. The label of injury prone gets thrown around pretty casually, but it is hard to disagree that Dak has missed time over the last half decade. Consider that Dak suffered his ankle issue in 2020 that caused him to miss over half of the season and missed time in 2021 and 2022 for other smaller ailments. He missed over half of the season last year once more with his hamstring issue. Context is required here, especially for 2021 and 2022, but you can see why the discussion tends to happen.
Prescott was recently a guest of Good Good, the popular golf YouTube company, in a round where he teamed up with his teammate Will Grier and brother Tad Prescott. The match is a fun watch (here is how you can access it if you are so inclined) but during it there was obviously conversation about a number of topics.
Early on Prescott was asked if he was excited for the upcoming season and obviously said that he was. Dak was then pressed on what the process is like of trusting himself again after a big-time injury like the one he is coming back from.
“It should happen in the rehab. I usually break mine in the rehab. Honestly it’s not a good thing when you’ve been injured like I have and kind of throughout, career, just different injuries… you really just grow to trust the surgeons.”
”If I had surgery I had it for a reason. And I trust my rehab process. So I don’t really think about it once I’ve rehabbed. Especially if the doc says you’re good to go. Because if I do that I know it’s just slow like… it’s one more thing that I think about and I don’t need to think about it.”
It should be assumed that every player approaches things like this differently, but Prescott’s disposition is fair. If you watch the clip he says the part about having had surgery for a reason pretty matter-of-factly. That is just basic logic. If you have a medical problem then you need medical help to fix it. End of story, so to speak.
It also makes sense how Prescott compartmentalizes it all. In letting himself trust the medical part of things he can let go of it and not have to think about it (to his point). When you are playing an incredibly physical game it is not hard to believe that this might be the best way to approach things from a macro standpoint.
As noted there were situations in 2021 and 2022 that caused Prescott to miss smaller chunks of time. He has not necessarily had a single issue that has plagued him over this time period which (again) makes the conversation about him being injury-prone complex.
Ultimately the Cowboys need Dak at his best to perform at their best so here’s to hoping all goes well with him from a medical standpoint in 2025.
