Dak Prescott is the 2024 amalgamation of Don Meredith, Danny White and Tony Romo.

But even more than just the latest in a long line of Dallas Cowboys’ quarterbacks who impressively win regular-season games and individual awards only to fail spectacularly in the playoffs, Prescott potentially is …

Dirk Nowitzki.

I know, but hear me out.

In the wake of Prescott’s pitiful performance in yet another Cowboys’ postseason pratfall, long-frustrated fans are assessing the quarterback’s future. Will he remain an elite player who led the NFL in touchdown passes this season and someone who could eventually lead the Cowboys to a Super Bowl? Or is he stuck as merely a mediocre talent destined to disappoint in the playoffs and be eternally linked to good-but-never-great quarterbacks like Meredith (two NFL Championship Games, zero Super Bowls in the 1960s),

White (three NFC Championship Games, zero Super Bowls in the 1980s) and Romo (four Pro Bowls, one Top 3 MVP and zero Super Bowls in the 2000s)? What if he’s both? Next week Prescott will be among the NFL’s Top 5 in Most Valuable Player voting. That honor, however, comes fresh on the heels of a dismal game in which he threw two first-half interceptions, including a back-breaking Pick Six, in a stunning upset loss to the Green Bay Packers in the first round of the playoffs. Admitted Prescott, “I sucked. It’s all about winning in the playoffs, and I haven’t done that yet.” When looking at the Dak Dilemma, we need to zoom out past even the 30,000-foot view. Because irrational, knee-jerking critics writing him off as a “loser” and a “choker” who is “mentally soft” and will “never take us to a championship” are ringing a hauntingly familiar bell.

, and hold off torching your No. 4 jersey. Expand your perspective, all the way back to 2007. Almost 20 years ago we — meaning I — wrote off Dirk after a similarly humiliating playoff defeat and at a juncture in his career almost parallel to where Dak is today. In 2007 Nowitzki was the NBA’s MVP, averaging 25 points per game in leading the Dallas Mavericks to a

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 8 points as the Mavs were run out of the gym by 25 points. Cue the irrational impatience.

Immortality starts with getting knocked down 12 times and getting up 13. Right, Dirk? Right, Troy Aikman? tweet this

In my autopsy of the series for the Dallas Observer, I called Dirk “intimidated,” “a liability,” and complained that he “simply vanished.” “He shit his shorts in the spotlight,” I wrote. “We thought he had matured. We were wrong.” Sound familiar, Dak Denigrators?
At the time, 28-year-old Dirk had played nine seasons. Prescott, 30, just finished his eighth. 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 his subpar performance, Dirk disappeared to Australia for a month to seek solace in the middle of nowhere and the bottom of a bottle. He hiked. He slept under the stars. He drank. He strummed a guitar. He wrung the “Why me?!” from his mind and body. Every last drop. Then he returned, ready. “There’s no guarantees for any team in any season,” Dirk said during the start of Mavs’ 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.”
Said Prescott after his No. 2 seed team’s loss to the seventh-seeded Packers two weeks ago, “All I can do — all we can do — is try to come back stronger next season and take another swing at it in the playoffs. That’s the plan.”

Dak is Dirk.

Like Nowitzki, Prescott continues to be an immaculate leader in the locker room, a sparkling role model away from the game and a star player on the field who may someday, perhaps when we least expect it, bring a championship to North Texas.

While Mavs fans canceled Nowitzki long before the culture was even invented, team management fortunately stuck with him. Without actual proof that he could, owner Mark Cuban and general manager Donnie Nelson and coaches Avery Johnson and Rick Carlisle held onto the faith that Dirk one day would. After three more playoff failures that seemed to cement his legacy as a lovable loser, in 2011 Dirk led the Mavericks past teams led by Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and LeBron James to win a team championship and personal vindication.