Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is about to get paid handsomely for his job. There is skepticism from some fans and analysts both near and far that centers on him being nothing more than a game-managing bus driver. That he needs an offensive line and running game so dominant that there’s nothing much for him to do. This line of thinking continued in Mike Sando’s recent quarterback tier ranking article in The Athletic that polls personnel from around the NFL.

The original piece had Prescott as the 17th quarterback and in the higher end of the third tier. Figuring out where the Dallas signal caller ranks is an argument for another day. Today’s focus will center on if the Cowboys can win with Prescott once he gets paid.

According to Sando, paying tier three quarterbacks has been a dicey proposition in the past. Below is a list of quarterbacks who were similarly ranked to Prescott in the last five years and that were making, on average, top-10 money at the position.

Tier 3 QB Yr APY Rank W-L Alex Smith 2018 9th 6-4 Joe Flacco 2017 6th 9-7 Alex Smith 2014 10th 8-7 Kirk Cousins 2018 3rd 8-7-1 Joe Flacco 2018 10th 4-5 Carson Palmer 2017 10th 3-4 Ryan Tannehill 2015 10th 6-10 Jay Cutler 2014 7th 5-10

If one believes Prescott is third tier, then one would look at the results of the teams the years paying their third-tier QBs top-10 coin and wince. Perhaps the problem here are those doing the evaluations.

The highly paid tier three quarterbacks trend older, much older than Prescott. The average age of these players is 31. Prescott, whose birthday was this week, will enter the 2019 season at the age of 26, matching the youngest player on the list, former Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill. To assume that Prescott is a finished product at this point in his career seems incredibly short-sighted.

Here are the numbers from the prior year of the season’s when the third tier were well paid.

There’s only one quarterback who outperforms Prescott, 2017 Alex Smith. He happened to be at the helm of an offense with a number of dynamic offensive players and one of the best offensive coaching minds in the history of the NFL, head coach Andy Reid.

Sando does offer some hope that Prescott could become a second-tier quarterback by season’s end and provides a laundry list of such quarterbacks who were highly paid and how they fared. There is one quarterback who has had repeated success on that list that Prescott compares quite favorably to, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.

Compare their numbers through the first three seasons in the NFL:

Russell Wilson performed at a slightly better rate than Prescott both in terms of passing and running the ball, though he did throw interceptions and fumble at a higher rate. In the most recent of Sando’s survey, Wilson is currently the last player named to the first tier of quarterbacks. If anyone is wondering when he truly came into his own and broke out into one of the league’s best passers, it was his fourth season. Dak Prescott is currently entering, well, his fourth season.

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