Dak Prescott, the Cowboys quarterback whose records stop at January

Dak Prescott

Photo: All-Pro Reels / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	July 29, 1993 Sulphur
Occupation	Footballer
Individual awards	NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year · Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year · 4× Pro Bowl

On Monday night in Philadelphia, Dak Prescott threw three touchdown passes, gave the Eagles nothing back and moved past Roger Staubach. The win was his eighty-sixth as the Dallas starter, leaving only Troy Aikman above him on the franchise list. The same evening he took one more line from Tony Romo, most games with multiple touchdown passes, after already taking Romo’s career yards and career touchdowns. Those three names are the history of the Cowboys at quarterback, and Prescott keeps climbing over them.

The two men still ahead of him in that history, Staubach and Aikman, are remembered for something else. They won in January and February. Prescott, in his eleventh season, has never played in a conference championship game, and the team he walked off the field with on Monday had a losing record. Nobody in Dallas argues about whether he can throw. The argument is about which column of the record book counts.

He grew up a long way from that argument. Rayne Dakota Prescott was born on July 29, 1993, in Sulphur, Louisiana, the youngest of three sons of Nathaniel and Peggy Prescott. His parents divorced when he was in elementary school and his mother raised the boys while managing a truck stop. At Haughton High School he threw 39 touchdown passes as a senior and ran for nearly a thousand yards, then picked Mississippi State over offers from LSU and TCU. In Starkville he turned a modest program into a contender: in 2014 the Bulldogs reached No. 1 in the national rankings for the first time in their history and played in the Orange Bowl, and he finished eighth in the Heisman voting. His mother had died of colon cancer the previous November, during the season in which he first took over as the starter. He left with 38 school records and two degrees, a bachelor’s in educational psychology and a master’s in workforce leadership, both finished before he was drafted.

Dallas took him in the fourth round of the 2016 draft, 135th overall, as a quarterback to develop behind Romo. He asked for No. 4 because his mother’s birthday was September 4. Then Romo broke a bone in his back in a preseason game against Seattle, and the rookie started the opener. Dallas went 13-3 and earned the NFC’s top seed; Prescott threw 23 touchdowns against four interceptions and was named Offensive Rookie of the Year. The season ended with a 34-31 loss to Green Bay in the divisional round, a pattern nobody yet recognized as one. Romo never got the job back.

The year that tested him hardest had little to do with football. In April 2020 his older brother Jace died by suicide. That September, in an interview with Graham Bensinger, Prescott said he had been dealing with anxiety and depression in the days before his brother’s death. Skip Bayless answered on Undisputed that the leader of a franchise should not show weakness, and Fox Sports publicly distanced itself from its own host. A month later Prescott’s right ankle snapped, a compound fracture and dislocation against the Giants, and his season was over. In March 2021 Dallas signed him to a four-year, $160 million extension with a $66 million signing bonus, at the time the largest in league history.

The playoff record is where the case against him lives, and it is not imaginary. Prescott is 2-5 in the postseason. The two wins, over Seattle after the 2018 season and at Tampa Bay four years later, both came in the wild-card round. In January 2022 the season ended with Prescott running a draw with 14 seconds left and the clock expiring before he could spike the ball; afterward he appeared to condone fans throwing objects at the officials and later apologized. The worst one came after his best regular season. In 2023 he led the league with 36 touchdown passes and finished second to Lamar Jackson in MVP voting, and then, at home against a seventh-seeded Green Bay team, he threw two first-half interceptions, one returned for a touchdown, and Dallas trailed 27-0 on the way to a 48-32 loss. Some of that belongs to the defenses and coaches around him. Not all of it does. In September 2024 the Cowboys signed him anyway, four years and $240 million, an average of $60 million a season, the highest in NFL history at the time. Two months later a torn hamstring required surgery and ended his year.

What followed was a quiet answer to the question of whether he was finished. In 2025, under new head coach Brian Schottenheimer, he started all 17 games and threw for 4,552 yards, 30 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He passed Romo’s franchise yardage record in a November comeback from 21-0 down against the Eagles and made his fourth Pro Bowl. Dallas finished 7-9-1 and missed the playoffs.

This season has followed the same shape. Four touchdown passes against Washington in Week 2 gave him Romo’s career touchdown record. In Week 3 the Cowboys played Baltimore at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, the NFL’s first game in the city, and lost 34-31. A week later his 12-yard touchdown to CeeDee Lamb with 40 seconds left beat Houston. Then came losses to Tampa Bay and Green Bay with four interceptions between them, and the Monday-night reply in Philadelphia: 15 of 27, 212 yards, three touchdowns, none of them thrown to the other team. Against NFC East opponents he is now 39-11.

Off the field the picture is steadier than the standings. The Faith Fight Finish Foundation, created in his mother’s honor, was set up to help people through adversity, and in 2022 the league named him Walter Payton Man of the Year. He and Sarah Jane Ramos had a daughter on February 29, 2024, and a second in May 2025. Their engagement ended in March 2026, a month before the wedding, and they share the raising of both girls. He lives in Frisco, Texas, near the team’s headquarters.

Dallas, at 3-4, plays Arizona on a short week on November 1, with the Giants leading the division. Aikman’s 94 wins are eight away, a mark Prescott can reach in the regular season. The record that would change how Dallas talks about him cannot be won before January.

Tags: sports, athletes, NFL, American football players, Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys, CeeDee Lamb

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