Rumors: Proposed trade has Cowboys sending Dak to Seahawks

[Mizak]

Proposed Blockbuster Trade Has Cowboys Sending Dak Prescott to NFC Foe

Could the Dallas Cowboys really move on from Dak Prescott?

heavy.com

 

[nwHawk]

Can’t help the club from the tub. Pass.

 

[TalontedNoseRider]

#RiDAKulous concept

 

[AROS]

Stranger things have happened.

 

[TwistedHusky]

Isn't the point to get an exceptional QB that can help this team win in the playoffs?

How would getting Dak help that?

 

[massari]

This type of move has PC/JS's name written all over it. At least he's not just a blitzing Safety

 

[seabowl]

Average qb that has been hurt with a huuuuge contract. Yeah trade for him NOW!!!

SMH

 

[Vesuve]

I don't like the site, Heavy.

It always says crap like this.

 

[Ruminator]

Yes! An injured QB and a horrible defense! Super Bowl!

 

[Nunya]

This isn't a rumor. This is nothing more than unsubstantiated speculation from a sports writing hack.

 

[CPHawk]

From what I’ve seen, it’s a no.

 

[Lagartixa]

Average qb that has been hurt with a huuuuge contract. Yeah trade for him NOW!!!

SMH

Prescott was better than Russell Wilson in 2019, 2020, and 2021, and he's four years younger than Wilson. He's been significantly above-average in that time. And much of Prescott's huge contract is signing bonus that the Cowboys would have to eat. After this season, he's got just two guaranteed years left on his contract, at salaries of $31M and $29M.

The reasons not to want him are that he gets injured too much, and the Seahawks would have to give up a lot of the draft capital they got in their hoodwinking of the still-loathed Broncos and The Teeth or possibly even more, given that Prescott's expected production in the next few years is better than Wilson's, due to recent history and age.
In terms of performance and contract, Prescott looks like a great idea. The problems are that the Seahawks, with their current roster, shouldn't be giving up as much draft capital as they would have to give up to get Prescott, and even if they somehow managed to cheat Jerruh and the gang in a trade and get Prescott for little (which is very unlikely to happen), they'd be taking a lot of risk with a player who misses so much time with injuries.

Additionally, it seems unlikely that the Cowboys would take a big dead-money hit to move Prescott unless they were completely sure he won't return to playing as well as he has.

So the whole thing seems both unlikely and ill-advised for the Seahawks, but not because of Prescott's contract, nor his expected performance if he were to somehow manage to stay on the field.

 

[xray]

<<

 

[GemCity]

Hard pass

 

[NoChops]

Prescott was better than Russell Wilson in 2019, 2020, and 2021, and he's four years younger than Wilson. He's been significantly above-average in that time. And much of Prescott's huge contract is signing bonus that the Cowboys would have to eat. After this season, he's got just two guaranteed years left on his contract, at salaries of $31M and $29M.

The reasons not to want him are that he gets injured too much, and the Seahawks would have to give up a lot of the draft capital they got in their hoodwinking of the still-loathed Broncos and The Teeth or possibly even more, given that Prescott's expected production in the next few years is better than Wilson's, due to recent history and age.
In terms of performance and contract, Prescott looks like a great idea. The problems are that the Seahawks, with their current roster, shouldn't be giving up as much draft capital as they would have to give up to get Prescott, and even if they somehow managed to cheat Jerruh and the gang in a trade and get Prescott for little (which is very unlikely to happen), they'd be taking a lot of risk with a player who misses so much time with injuries.

Additionally, it seems unlikely that the Cowboys would take a big dead-money hit to move Prescott unless they were completely sure he won't return to playing as well as he has.

So the whole thing seems both unlikely and ill-advised for the Seahawks, but not because of Prescott's contract, nor his expected performance if he were to somehow manage to stay on the field.

What the? Russ had a better QB rating 2 out of three years, threw for more touchdowns 2 out of three years, won more games, made the playoffs more, won more playoff games...... Dak is barley better than Geno.

 

[CouchLogic]

LOL.

"Rumor".

 

[FloridaSeahawk18]

Hard to believe with Pete kissing Geno's ass the past few weeks. Dak is already 29 too so we might as well wait for a younger Bryce Young/Will Levis.

 

[sutz]

Sounds like more of a "rumor I'd like to start" than anything real.

 

[Lagartixa]

What the? Russ had a better QB rating 2 out of three years, threw for more touchdowns 2 out of three years, won more games, made the playoffs more, won more playoff games...... Dak is barley better than Geno.

I was comparing them by DVOA, which tries to correct for things like opponent quality and measure how well a given player is doing the things that actually help a team win, rather than holding the player responsible for the way the front office built the team on which he plays.

In 2019, Prescott was 6th in DVOA. Wilson was 7th.
By DYAR (a measure of value produced, not per-snap quality), Prescott was best in the league by quite a bit. Wilson was 4th.
By ANY/A, Prescott was 6th and Wilson was 8th.
By passer rating, which doesn't take things like sacks, fumbles, or opponent quality into account, Wilson was 5th and Prescott 10th.
By QBR, Prescott was 4th and Wilson 5th.

In 2020, Prescott was 8th in DVOA. Wilson was 13th.
By DYAR, Prescott was just 19th, while Wilson was 11th. That gets to one of my big issues with Prescott, which I'll discuss in more detail below. On a per-snap basis, Prescott was noticeably better, but Prescott only had 222 attempts.
By ANY/A, Prescott was 6th and Wilson 8th, basically confirming what DVOA told us: on a per-snap basis, Prescott was better than Wilson. But Wilson stayed on the field much better than Prescott (i.e., didn't get injured and miss time), and so produced more value.

In 2021, Prescott was third in DVOA and third in DYAR. Wilson was 12th in DVOA and 15th in DYAR. That was the one season in which Wilson lost playing time to injury, and Prescott missed just one game.
ANY/A had the two closer in per-snap quality than DVOA, but with Prescott still ahead of Wilson. Prescott was 7th and Wilson 8th.
By QBR, Wilson (54.7, good for 9th) was just ahead of Prescott (54.6, good for 11th, with Wentz of all people between the two with a score that also rounded to 54.7 like Wilson's).
By passer rating, Prescott (104.2, good for third) was just ahead of Wilson (103.1, good for fourth).

I have my problems with DVOA, because the FootballOutsiders feel they have to keep the formulas secret, but at least they tell us qualitatively how it's calculated, and specifically, what factors go into it. That makes it infinitely better than, say, PFF grades, which appear to be little more than "here's how much our writers personally like each player." That is, PFF grades are total black boxes, with nothing more than "trust us, our graders are good" as a response to "how do you calculate these grades?" Even if they're not black boxes to the extent PFF grades are, DVOA and DYAR are still black boxes, so they're inferior in that respect to things like AV, QBR, passer rating, and ANY/A, which are calculated by publicly available formulas, but DVOA appears to be a better measure of player quality, and DYAR a better measure of value produced, than any of those.

Counting stats, like TDs or passing yards, are good measures of actual value produced, but not good measures of player quality, nor of what to expect of players going forward. Rate stats, like TDs per dropback and ANY/A (or even passing yards per dropback, which fails to account for things like sacks and turnovers), are much-better measures of player quality and predictors of future performance. I prefer DYAR, which has the same kinds of adjustments as DVOA, but it's a measure of value produced by the player or team, not per-snap quality like DVOA.

As I mentioned, one of Prescott's biggest weaknesses is that he already missed a lot of the 2020 season with injuries, plus he's out for at least a month of the 2022 season (and if Wilson's utter suckitude after coming back from a finger injury after just a few games missed last season is any kind of guide, Prescott might help his team more by recovering fully before trying to return). I believe in one of the first major original results that came out of Baseball Prospectus: "health is a skill," that is, that players who have had injury problems tend to continue to have injury problems. That was actually my biggest issue with the contract the Seahawks gave Dissly: on every play, I'm afraid one of his tendons will pop.

The two reasons I don't want the Seahawks to get Prescott are because he's now missing multiple games for the second time in three seasons, and because he would cost too much in draft capital to get. The post to which I was replying came to the same conclusion I did (don't get Prescott!), but by what I consider to be completely incorrect criteria: claiming Prescott was average, when in fact he's been one of the top QBs in the NFL on a per-snap basis, and when he's stayed on the field, one of the best in absolute production terms too; and claiming that Prescott has an expensive contract, which is true, but it wouldn't be the case for the Seahawks if they acquired him, because much of the cap cost for Prescott in 2022-2024 is in signing-bonus proration, which the Cowboys would have to eat. If you could get Prescott without having to give up much draft capital and pay him $94,000 (yes, just ninety-four thousand!!) for each game he's on your roster in 2022, then pay him $31M in 2023 and $29M in 2024, that would be very much worth doing, even with the injury risk. But since that's not going to happen, I'd rather the Seahawks stay away from a player who is likely to cost a ton of draft capital and who appears riskier in injury terms than he did a couple of years ago.

 

[Own The West]

My favorite Heavy articles are the ones that just repeat the click-bait titles in paragraph form and offer no additional details.

Oh Heavy, you clever girl. You fooled me again!