Seven months later, there is still some dispute about why so many NFL teams missed on Dak Prescott. Surveying general managers, coaches and personnel evaluators delivers a wide swath of answers. From the obvious – like Prescott’s DUI charge before the draft – to the less discernable, like teams overestimating the Mississippi State talent surrounding Prescott.

Even with the Dallas Cowboys – who took four rounds and a scuttled trade effort to make the right call – there is a lack of clarity concerning where exactly Prescott fit into the draft plans. One team source told Yahoo Sports four quarterbacks drew a better collective grade from the organization – Jared Goff, Carson Wentz, Paxton Lynch and Connor Cook. But another says that six quarterbacks were higher than Prescott on the Dallas draft board – the aforementioned quartet, plus Jacoby Brissett and Jeff Driskel.

So before team owner Jerry Jones can deliver a wink and tell it differently, it’s worth shining a light on how everyone else got this wrong before Dallas finally got it right.

View photos Dak Prescott proved to be a little better than Jameill Showers for the Cowboys. (Getty Images) More

“It was a coaching staff pick,” one Cowboys source said. “[The personnel staff] can be honest about that. If anyone is most responsible for him being taken, the coaches liked him maybe a little more than the scouts did. [The scouts] thought they already had a Dak on the roster in Jameill Showers.”

It turns out, much to the Cowboys’ delight and surprise, they didn’t have a Dak on the roster. And that they do now has been a well-chronicled bit of good fortune. But it wasn’t all luck. It turns out Dallas did far more homework on Prescott than any other team in the NFL draft. And that’s ultimately why the Cowboys eventually made the selection that everyone else missed.

“Of all the players I’ve coached in my entire career, the Cowboys inquired with me personally more about Dak than any team – and more than any player ever,” Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen said. “I talked to the position coach. I talked to the coordinator. I talked to the head coach.”

So how did Dak Prescott end up falling to the fourth round, and how exactly did Dallas end up making the pick that others didn’t? After talking to Mullen and more than a dozen coaching, scouting and executive sources, here were the most interesting tidbits involving the many ups and downs of Dak …

Prescott on the field

The overriding thread about Prescott that might have hurt him most was the Mississippi State offense. Unless a quarterback is elite in several areas, the spread offense and lack of huddle time becomes an instant downward pressure on prospects. Conversely, proficient pro-style quarterbacks get lifted in evaluations. Prescott versus Cook of Michigan State was a prime example of this.

Just from the translation of tape standpoint, it was universal that Cook’s evaluation became what he likely could do on the field in the NFL vs. what Prescott might not be able to do. One scout even related a story about sitting in a press box watching Prescott in college and having a Tim Tebow debate with another evaluator – despite Prescott’s game being tangibly different than Tebow’s.

“It’s really on the top shelf of every report,” an evaluator said of Prescott running a no-huddle spread offense. “For us, the way we break guys down, you get past the measurable things – does he have the size we’re looking for and things like that – and it’s right into, ‘What offense is he running and what can we translate easily?’ If the answer is, ‘It looks nothing like what we do,’ then that is a project player and the conversation goes into that direction, which at quarterback is not a good direction.”

A number of evaluators provided a wide array of things they might have underestimated about Prescott. Three reasons resonated:

Story continues