Dak Prescott had a quarterback rating of 51.3 in the Dallas Cowboys' loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. That marks his fifth game this season with a rating below 70, his third below 60 and his fifth game with multiple interceptions. He has only one game with more than 300 yards passing, and that came against the miserable New York Giants. Most of those yards came after the catch anyway.

Let's compare some of those numbers to what Tony Romo did in his last full season, 2014. He fell below a quarterback rating of 70 only twice, but he topped 100 a whopping ten times. Prescott has done that only five times this season, and only one came without Ezekiel Elliott was in the lineup. Romo also had only two games with multiple interceptions, and he averaged almost 40 more yards per game through the air than Prescott (247 to 210).

The Cowboys were not a perfect team this season by any means, but a cursory glance at the team's roster show where the problems really were. Even with Elliott missing six games, the Cowboys were still the league's third ranked rushing team coming into Week 16. The defense has been good enough to go 7-3 when Sean Lee was in the lineup, and one of those losses involved the opponent (the Seahawks) gaining more yards through penalties than on offense. Chidobe Awuzie and Jourdan Lewis came into their own at cornerback just as DeMarcus Lawrence (a potential Defensive Player of the Year) and David Irving did on the defensive line. The offensive line may have missed Tyron Smith when he was injured, but they still had two All Pro's. The roster was loaded. The problem was the quarterback.

Prescott showed absolutely no growth between his rookie and sophomore seasons. If anything, he regressed under the pressure of expectations. The No. 23 (and falling) ranked passing game was a liability all season, and the worst part is, the Cowboys had the answer to that problem on their roster. If Romo were under center for this team, given all of the talent they have on both sides of the ball, they would have made the playoffs and competed for a Super Bowl berth.

Romo routinely led inferior teams to better seasons than this. The 2009 team went 11-5 with Marion Barber as the leading rusher. Prescott got humiliated in three straight games because former Pro Bowler Alfred Morris apparently wasn't good enough for him. Neither was a line with two Pro Bowl-caliber players, but in Romo's last season before the great offensive line overhaul began with Smith's drafting, 2010, he led the Cowboys to 30 more yards per game on offense than Prescott did this season (364 to 334). He did that with Felix Jones as his leading rusher and Miles Austin as his leading receiver.

When he did have teams like this one, he thrived. The 2007 Cowboys earned the NFC's No. 1 seed, and they did it largely through their aerial dominance. The 2014 team was more ground-bound, but they lost on a bad call rather than a mistake by Romo.

He was able to win with those lesser players because he was, definitively, a better player than Prescott. Prescott has a lower quarterback rating this season than Romo did in any full season of his career, and passing rules are far easier for Prescott than they were for Romo. He was able to succeed last season through the grace of his star teammates, but the moment his supporting cast went from perfect to merely great, he fell apart.

But he never should have gotten that chance. Winning by virtue of great teammates does not indicate greatness in a quarterback. There's a reason the Baltimore Ravens never built a Trent Dilfer statue. The Cowboys could have upgraded at quarterback last season, but chose to let Prescott ride his superior teammates further. They were enamored with his age and low salary number, so they chose him as the quarterback of the future.

None of that matters if the player himself isn't good. Prescott isn't, and Romo is. The Cowboys just lost a season because of Prescott's ineptitude. That never would have happened with Romo. If Prescott doesn't give them any reason to change their minds, then they should see how interested Romo would be in coming back for his old job.

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