Dak Prescott is the leader of the Dallas Cowboys. That’s undeniable.

Last week during an interview with NBC’s Peter King Dak talked about this, and he talked about where it comes from and how it happened. He credited both Tony Romo and Jason Witten.

While it’s admirable that Dak credited Romo, he didn’t play with him or have the same sort of on-field relationship with him that he did with Jason Witten. Dak connected with Jason Witten over the course of two years, and he was a captain alongside him during Witten’s final season in the NFL last year.

As 2017 was indeed Witten’s last year playing professional football that means that 2018 doesn’t have him in it. With the Cowboys playing at AT&T Stadium for the first time this season on Saturday against the Cincinnati Bengals, it was the first example of Witten’s absence for a home game.

Witten’s absence is a big deal both in a metaphorical and literal way. He was the leader for so long, and he was the cornerstone of everything that they did... literally. Within AT&T Stadium Jason Witten held the locker in the corner that was a symbol of who the team’s leader was. With him gone that locker is now occupied by none other than Dak Prescott.

While you might be rolling your eyes, know that these are the types of things that Jason Garrett takes anything but lightly. This is a position, no pun intended, of extreme honor and accreditation. It means a great deal for Dak to be anointed as that guy in just his third year.

Hopefully for the Cowboys (and for us) Dak is the same type of leader that Witten was, and hopefully he’s able to do it for anywhere near as long. It’s hard to live up to the legacy of someone like Jason Witten, but it seems like Dak Prescott is going to do his best, and that’s all we can ask.