FRISCO, Texas – Count Dak Prescott as a believer in momentum.
It's one of the trendiest arguments in the football world. Within a game and from week to week, is momentum an actual force that aids teams? Prescott seems to think so.
With a three-game losing streak hanging over his head, and with just three games to play, now would be the perfect time for him to be proven correct.
"We want to give ourselves a chance to win, and to win as we finish this season out," he said. "To win in that tournament as you get there, you've got to get momentum going."
Prescott's answer was in response to the very real and very strange fact that, strictly speaking, Sunday's game against Los Angeles can't do much to hurt their playoff chances. Win or lose against the Rams, a pair of wins against Philadelphia and Washington in the coming weeks would get them into the postseason.
But anyone who has watched the Cowboys these past few weeks is aware they've got a few kinks to work out. If they want to make the playoffs – let alone play well if they get there – it'd help to start playing like it.
"Momentum is something serious, if we can get it on our side," Prescott said. "This has been a streaky team, and yes you've got to that first one to get the second one, and that's kind of just the mindset. 'Focus on today, let's focus on now, let's focus on this week and not worry about the rest.'"
It really has been a streaky season, although most of those streaks haven't been the good kind. The Cowboys won three-straight games to open the season, but they haven't won consecutive games since then. They followed up the 3-0 start by falling to 3-3, which means this current three-game losing streak is their second of the season.
Compounding all that is the obvious fact that, statistically at least, the Cowboys seem to be a decent team. Prescott leads the league in passing yards, and the Cowboys are first in the NFL in total offense. Their red zone performance and their scoring totals have dipped in recent weeks, but they still hardly look like a sub-.500 team on paper.
To that point, Prescott was asked about the fact that the Cowboys have a 4,000-yard passer, a 1,000-yard rusher and a 1,000-yard receiver – and they may add another 1,000-yard receiver to the tally, as Michael Gallup sits just 95 yards off that milestone.
"It shows you the talent we have. The talent, the potential and the yards – that we can be productive," he said. We're doing the right thing and we're in the right spot, but it takes all 11. It takes all 22, it takes all 53 – it takes everybody."
That takes the conversation right back to its starting point. There's plenty of evidence to suggest the Cowboys are a better team than their record has shown. It has not translated on the field to this point, and there are only three games to play.
If the Cowboys are going to shift that on-paper success to the field, now would be the time.
"Those numbers and all that are good, but when you're not winning games, they don't matter," Prescott said. "Some of them are trash stats, some of them aren't. But at the end of the day it's about wins – wins and losses."
