Dak Prescott makes appearance at Cowboys practice, shows progress

Dak Prescott jumped on a recent videoconference to share the experience of his season-ending injury with a small group of rookies in an NFL.com roundtable discussion. He talked about the little victories in the often-grueling recovery process, of the joy in seeing his body respond and improve, even in tiny increments.

On Friday, he turned up at practice to show his Cowboys teammates some of that progress.

It’s an encouraging sign for Prescott’s rehab, and had to be a emotional lift for the team the day after the funeral for Cowboys strength and conditioning coordinator Markus Paul.

Prescott suffered a horrific ankle dislocation and compound fracture on October 11, in a Week 5 game against the Giants. Since then, he’s been working hard to be ready for the first team activities of the 2021 season. And as he told first-year pros Chase Claypool, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, and teammate Trevon Diggs on the Rookie Roundtable call, his journey back has been a series of baby steps.

“In a snapshot, I’ve been able to play every level of my career because the guy in front of me has gotten injured. So I know what it means to be ready, to stay ready, in case a guy gets injured in front of you. But now to be that guy that’s injured for the first time in my career and for the rest of the season, it’s different. It’s tough. But for me, as I talk about the mental capacity, for me, it’s about creating and making small victories. So each and every day when I wake up and I go in for rehab, it’s about, for me, seeing my leg or seeing my body do something that it didn’t do the day before. Creating a feeling that I didn’t have the day before, so I know that I’m continuing to get better. At the end of the day, my team needs me. And I know that they need me now, for support, but they’ll need me again later. So it’s about helping them whichever way that I can and however I can. But it’s about being right mentally and then counting those small victories.”

Team owner Jerry Jones heard those words and spoke of how they’re indicative of Prescott’s remarkable leadership during his weekly call-in to Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan.

“I noted his comment about his little victories every day. His little victories. Little things. He looks to stack those up. Boy, that’s telling as to how his mind is and how he approaches his work and having those positive gains. Every day, as early as you can, you need a victory,” Jones told hosts Kevin Hageland and Cory Mageors.

Jori Epstein of USA Today noted in a thread of tweets that Prescott, dressed in a track suit and wearing a mask, chatted with vice president of player personnel Will McClay and also caught up briefly with head coach Mike McCarthy. After taking a few steps without his crutch for Elliott, Dak waited in the doorway to high-five all the Cowboys quarterbacks as they took the field.

Then No. 4 very carefully hobbled inside with the help of his single crutch as the team got on with the business of prepping to host Baltimore on Tuesday night.

But maybe just for a moment there on Friday, things around The Star in Frisco seemed entirely normal.

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