INCREDIBLE: Dallas cowboys QB request for termination of contract as he explained….
Dak Is Dirk: Can Cowboys’ Disappointing Star Follow Mavs Iconic Hero?
Dallas Cowboys’ Dan Quinn altering DNA, Mavericks Mark Cuban fending off ambush, are we ready for our nextd Blaand screaming over streaming, all in this week’s DFW sports notebook.
Whether you’re at the end of your coffee, your day, your week or even your rope, welcome to Whitt’s End …
*During almost 40 years in DFW sports media, I haven’t exactly been the voice of deep breaths, sound reasoning or meditative wait-and-sees.
There was the time(s) I proclaimed the Texas Rangers would never win a World Series. “Patrick Mahomes will be a bust.” I shrugged off the internet as a fad. Yanked the emergency brake on a couple of marriages. And, just last week, made a “guaranteed” prediction: Dallas Cowboys 48, Green Bay Packers 17.
As uncharacteristic as it is for me to utter and as uncomfortable as it may be for you to hear, I’m benching my irrational idiocy to offer a plea for patience:
Let Dak Prescott’s cake bake.
For those “prisoner of the moment,” knee-jerk critics who are ready to dump the Cowboys’ quarterback in the wake of last weekend’s colossal collapse because he’s too soft mentally, an eternal “choker” and a loser that will never ever never lead his team to a championship, allow me a short, sweet retort:
Dak is Dirk.
Here’s hoping that Prescott is grabbing his backpack and heading for the Australian Outback. That he loyally leaves money on the table in his upcoming contract negotiations to help the front office buy/build better players around him. And that he continues being an immaculate leader in the locker room, a sparkling role model away from the game, and a star player on the field that – someday, perhaps when we least expect it – brings a championship to DFW.
It worked for Dirk Nowitzki. Why not Dak Prescott?
After all, we – re: I – wrote off Dirk after a similarly humiliating defeat and at an almost parallel juncture in his career 17 years ago.
In 2007 he was the NBA’s MVP, averaging 25 points per game in leading the Mavericks to a 67-15 record and the No. 1 seed throughout the playoffs.
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But then they embarrassingly lost to the No. 8 seed Golden State Warriors in one of the biggest upsets in NBA playoff history. In the clinching Game 6 in Oakland, Dirk missed 11 of 13 shots and scored only eight points as the Mavs were ran out of the gym by 25. (Cue the part about me being impatient.)
In my autopsy of the series for the Dallas Observer, I called Dirk “intimidated,” “a liability,” and complained that he “simply vanished.”
“He (bleeped) his shorts in the spotlight,” I wrote. “We thought he had matured. We were wrong.”
Ring any bells, Dak Denigrators?
At the time, 28-year-old Dirk had played nine seasons and ruined his MVP year with a first-round flameout. Prescott, 30, just finished his eighth season in which he will likely finish Top 3 in MVP voting, but spoiled it with – yup – a first-round flameout.
Dirk, like Dak, was a great player on some really good teams. Perennial All-Star. Scoring records. Individual awards. Everything … except putting a ring on it.
To deal with the depression of her subpar performance, Dirk went to Australia for a month to seek solace in the middle of nowhere. He hiked. He slept under the stars. He drank. He strummed a guitar. He wrang the “why me?!” from his mind and body. Every last drop.
He returned, ready. “There’s no guarantees for any team in any season,” he said during training camp four months later. “But I’m committed to do everything I can to put us in the best situation possible come playoff time … then we’ll see what happens.”
Dak is Dirk.
While Mavs fans canceled him long before the culture was even invented, fortunately team management stuck with him. Without actual proof that he could, Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson and Avery Johnson and Rick Carlisle held onto the faith that Dirk finally would.
After three more playoff failures that seemed to cement his legacy as a loser, in 2011 Dirk led the Mavericks past teams led by Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and LeBron James to a team championship and personal vindication. In his 13th season of trying.
As the final seconds ticked away in the clinching Game 6 in Miami, Dirk began crying on the court. Overcome with emotion, he hopped the press table and scurried into the locker room. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts, as he had been on all the countless, sleepless nights when you, me and almost everyone else gave up on him.
“It was just a lot,” Nowitzki has since said of that moment. “The realization that all the stuff you went through had finally paid off … powerful feeling.”
The view from the mountaintop was worth the depths of every valley.
Personal of his personal journey, Dirk’s title remains arguably the most cherished championship in DFW sports history. The Cowboys’ No. 4 can top even the Mavs’ No. 41.
Dak’s got the support of owner Jerry Jones, who will likely sign him to a $300(ish) million contract this offseason. And of coach Mike McCarthy, who sees him as not a problem but rather a “part of the solution.”
In 2007, Dirk had a horrible series. In 2024, Dak endured a nightmare game.
Against the 7th-seeded Packers, he looked stunned. He acted skittish. He made uncharacteristic decisions, compounded by unfathomable throws. He fell to 2-5 in the playoffs, joining a dubious group of quarterbacks with more than 70 regular-season wins and less than three postseason wins that includes only Andy Dalton, Ryan Tannehill and Kirk Cousins.
But he’s also the same quarterback that … became the first Cowboy to lead the NFL in passing touchdowns … has led Dallas to 36 wins since 2021, second only to the Kansas City Chiefs’ 37 … plays in a sport where quarterbacks often take time to, ahem, bake: Tom Brady, Joe Montana and Steve Young won all their MVPs after 30; Matthew Stafford his Super Bowl at 33.
Says former Cowboys quarterback-turned-radio analyst Babe Laufenberg, “If Dak were out there on the open market, you’d see as many as 24 teams clamoring for his services.”
Pause and remember this next time you’re convincing your buddy that the Cowboys should cut Prescott and hand the starting job to Trey Lance:
Insanity may be repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different result. But immortality is getting knocked down 12 times and getting up 13. Right, Dirk?
Today’s scorn and scars can become tomorrow’s statue.
“I understand it’s about winning a Super Bowl,” Prescott said after the Green Bay loss. “That’s the standard of this league and damn sure the standard of this place. I get it.”
What should frustrated Cowboys fans do in the wake of another embarrassing end to another disappointing season? I dunno, kick the dog. Burn your jerseys. Have AI write a very terse email or two. But mostly, in the name of Nowitzki, don’t give up.
What should Dak do in this soul-searching offseason?
He should call Dirk. From Australia.
“Yeah … here we gooooooo!”
*I haven’t given up on this season’s Mavs (ah, see what I did there?), but there’s nothing interesting happening on the court. But off it … wow. I’m often in the same workout program as Mark Cuban in Dallas on Saturday mornings. Last week, during a water break, I looked up and he’s having a heated exchange with some guy while a bunch of folks circled around him holding cameras.
Ambush! I don’t know who James O’Keefe is, but I do know he’s a coward and a clown that gives a bad name to the profession of “journalism.” Something about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Though he leans left, Mark was on the right side of the argument.
*Only 26 days until Rangers pitchers and catchers report to spring training in Surprise, Arizona. A year ago at this time, we had no clue we were on the verge of a championship season. To be honest, we didn’t know it midway through October, either.
*Back in Black? DeMeco Ryans with the Houston Texans. Todd Bowles in Tampa Bay. Mike McDaniel in Miami. The Steelers’ Mike Tomlin. There are four Black head coaches in the NFL this season and they all led their teams to the playoffs. McCarthy is coming back, but it made me wonder: Are Cowboys fans ready for a Black head coach?
With the New England Patriots hiring Jerod Mayo this week, Dallas is among only 12 teams to never have one. DFW was fine and dandy with Ron Washington leading the Rangers to the World Series and Avery Johnson taking the Mavs to the NBA Finals. But something tells me a Black coach in charge of the Cowboys wouldn’t “sit well” with some fans. If you know what I mean. And I know you do.
*I despise the cold. No really, like curl-up-under-a-blanket-and-surrender hate it. Down to around 10 degrees this week and I learned that other folks are even more effected than me: Medical professionals who perform autopsies, and drivers of electric cars. Turns out that frozen pipes prevent necessary running water in morgues, and frigid temps decrease battery life in Teslas.
*As pathetic as the offense played against the Packers, more troubling was how the defense tried to play. As in, after a season of success playing man-to-man coverage, why did Dan Quinn abruptly switch to zone? You’re the No. 2 seed playing at home. You don’t change, you make the underdog chase. Right? Seems like Quinn so feared an ailing Stephon Gilmore and DaRon Bland playing man on Green Bay’s young receivers that he altered Dallas’ defensive DNA.
Not only is that shaky strategy, consider the message it sent to his players: “Guys, we have to drastically change the way we play against this team or we’ll b
