Dak Prescott Camp Update — August 23: Three Red-Zone Scores on Six Snaps

Dak Prescott threw three red-zone touchdowns on six snaps against the New Orleans defense at Tuesday's joint practice in Oxnard, with one interception elsewhere in the session, per Adam Schultz at Roundtable. For the second week in a row, the situational periods against another team's defense — the closest thing August offers to real football for a quarterback who is not playing preseason games — went almost entirely his way. The team's own practice report added a wrinkle on usage: a designed pitch to tight end Jake Ferguson, part of what it described as creative play-calling with the first unit. One deep ball also made the highlight files, a leaping George Pickens catch in coverage, per Randy Gurzi at Cowboys On SI.

The practice was better than its atmosphere. Fights broke out repeatedly — Donovan Ezeiruaku was ejected, and Brian Schottenheimer called the day "a little chippy" and not how the team likes to do business, per Schultz — but none of the mess touched Prescott's file. Saturday he sat the 34 to 13 win in Arizona, per Kurt Daniels at the team's website, while Joe Milton and Sam Howell handled the quarterbacking; Schottenheimer has been direct that Dallas is not going to play many starters this preseason, per Grant Afseth at Dallas Sports Journal. Holding him out remains a plan, not a problem.

Back in June the case on Prescott was the throwing itself — one of the league's three most accurate passers by completion rate over expectation, on heavy volume, with two alpha receivers — and every situational period camp has offered keeps producing exactly that film, with the structural cautions about his age-33 season and the lack of a rushing cushion waiting on real games.

The checkable things: whether Prescott plays a single preseason series before rosters cut to 53 on Sunday, August 30, and how the first-team target split looks whenever he does. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._