Welcome to part three of “Hurts Vs. the World”, a series of articles in which I compare Jalen Hurts to other young QB’s around the league. This article is a bit different considering Dak Prescott isn’t viewed as “young” anymore. That being said, I still think this a great comparison, especially since both of them are in the NFC East.
Let’s take a quick look at how both of these QB’s performed in their 2nd year in the NFL:
Jalen Hurts vs. Dak Prescott in their 2nd seasons:
Dak: 3,681 Tot. Yards, 28 TD’s, 13 Turnovers, 62.9 CMP%, in 16 games
Hurts: 3,928 Tot. Yards, 26 TD’s, 10 Turnovers, 61.3 CMP%, in 15 games
— Hunter Simpson (@HSimpsonNFL) February 4, 2022
Statistically speaking, you could say Jalen Hurts is better and be 100% right. But if you were to look at tape, you’d see that a young Dak Prescott has qualities to his game that Jalen Hurts doesn’t quite have yet. Even so, it was obvious that Dak Prescott still had a lot to improve on. This is the reason that I think it’s important that we take the time to compare the two QBs.
In my previous 2 articles in Hurts Vs. the World, I’ve restated constantly that the 2 major improvements that Jalen Hurts needs to make are accuracy and field vision. In both categories, Prescott started off his career looking much better. In his rookie season, Prescott completed nearly 68% of his passes on 459 pass attempts. It was also clear that Dak Prescott had natural arm talent to work with. This isn’t to say Hurts doesn’t, because I fully believe he has the strength and work ethic to perfect his deep ball. Hurts definitely needs more work than just his deep ball, but if he incorporated an accurate, deep pass into his game, it’d be a whole new ball game.
Dak Prescott now has a stronger arm, better pocket awareness, and he has truly improved his football IQ over his 6 year career. This is of course excluding the last play of the Cowboys-49ers playoff game. That one’s for you Eagles fans, had to give you guys one more laugh at that. All jokes aside, these are all things that Jalen Hurts needs to improve on. Just by watching tape, you can see just how much Prescott has improved throughout his career. If Hurts can improve in the same ways that Prescott did, we will have a top 10 QB again in Philly.
To give some credit to Jalen Hurts, he was put into a much worse situation than Dak Prescott was. As of now, Prescott’s receiving core consists of Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, Michael Gallup, and Cedrick Wilson. Compared to Hurts’ Devonta Smith, Jalen Reagor, Quez Watkins, and Greg Ward Jr. This alone speaks volumes about the amount of success that Hurts has had. Turning what was believed to be a bottom-5 roster, into a 9-8 playoff team is insanely impressive. Not to mention that Hurts did this in his FIRST year as a starter.
I want to take a quick look back at Christmas Day, 2021 when I tweeted this:
Dak Prescott’s Stats:
3,705 Tot Yds, 26 Tot TD’s, 15 Tot TurnoversJalen Hurts Stats:
3,464 Tot Yds, 24 Tot TD’s, 14 Tot TurnoversPrescott with Lamb, Cooper, Gallup, Schultz
Hurts with Smith, Watkins, Reagor, GoedertCan we talk about how overrated Dak has been this season?
— Hunter Simpson (@HSimpsonNFL) December 25, 2021
Dak definitely proved me wrong, however I still think he’s a bit overrated. Even so, I’d have him in my top 10 QBs, and you’d be pretty stupid, biased, or both to not.
