OXNARD, Calif. — Dak Prescott’s decision to wear a Super Bowl shirt on the flight to training camp may have drawn headlines, but it wasn’t exactly a new concept for the veteran quarterback. He’s always been on a mission to manifest.
“I said I would be the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys when I was 6 years old,” Prescott said on Thursday. “I said I would be in the NFL, and I got here. A lot of things I said I’d do, I did it.”
There is one difference between the 6-year-old who dreamed of being the quarterback for the Cowboys and the one currently living that existence. Time isn’t exactly on his side. And he knows it.
Prescott is entering his 11th season in the NFL. He turned 33 earlier this week, making him the fifth-oldest projected starting quarterback in the NFL. The fourth-round rookie who took the league by storm in 2016 is now the second-oldest player on the team behind 15-year veteran Bryan Anger.
Prescott admitted that he thought there would be more chances to go on deep playoff runs after he and the Cowboys finished that 2016 season. They went 13-3 that year and lost by a field goal in the divisional round against Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers.
“We’ll get back here next year,” Prescott recalled thinking. “We’ll block the field goal, or we’ll score and not get in that situation and then you look up and seven, eight years later, you’ve been to the playoffs, you’ve lost some games, some tough games in some brutal ways, and then you get into last season and you think you can control a lot of it and you think your play is ultimately going to be the deciding factor, and I probably had the best year of my career [last year], and we’re not even a playoff team. And then you realize these chances, these opportunities to put teams together that can actually make a run, don’t come often.”