The CFLs leading rusher kept adding to his gaudy

You should know up front that Dak Prescott was never shy about his ambitions. He was 8, 9 years old when he was following his older brothers around a high school football field speaking the words of a prophet.Im going to win the Heisman Trophy, he would say, and Im going to play for the Dallas Cowboys.Well, one out of two aint bad.Prescott doesnt just play for the Dallas Cowboys -- he plays quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, todays NFL equivalent of playing center field for yesterdays New York Yankees based on scrutiny, if not wins. His is among the most coveted jobs in American sports, and one that the 23-year-old rookie has handled with the poise and grace of a 10-year vet.Prescott is 4-1 and riding a four-game winning streak into Green Bays Lambeau Field, where he needs eight clean throws to break Tom Bradys record of 162 consecutive passes (set over the 2000-2001 seasons) without an interception to start a career. A fourth-round pick, Prescott has replaced an injured $108 million starter, Tony Romo, the way a sixth-round pick, Brady, replaced an injured $103 million starter, Drew Bledsoe, in 2001. The eighth quarterback picked in the 2016 draft ranks second in the NFL in Total QBR, behind Matt Ryan and two spots ahead of Sundays opposing QB, Aaron Rodgers.What a not-so-long, strange trip its been for a kid from Haughton, Louisiana, who had left Mississippi State burdened by comparisons to Tim Tebow. Like the former Florida Gator, Prescott was a dual-threat force who wore No. 15 (in Tebows honor), who threw for more than 9,300 yards and rushed for more than 2,500 yards for Dan Mullen (Tebows offensive coordinator at Florida), and who became rock-star popular at an SEC school by leading with his best trait -- a generosity of spirit. Prescott once even had a dog named after Tebow.When Dan Mullen recruited Dak, recalled Jason Brotherton, head coach at Haughton High and an assistant during Prescotts years, Dan told him, If you want to know more about me, call Tim Tebow. He whipped out Tebows phone number, and Dak was awed by that. Daks love of Tebow was more about his character, his leadership, how he gave 100 percent all the time and put his team on his back. But when it came to the finer points of playing quarterback, even though Tebow won the Heisman, we always thought Dak threw the ball better than he did.The rest of the NFL is finding out the truth the hard way. Prescott has completed 69 percent of his passes (Carson Wentz, fellow newbie and No. 2 overall pick, has completed 67.4 percent of his), and though three of the seven touchdowns he has accounted for have come on the ground, Prescott has rushed the ball only 19 times for 61 yards; he has thrown it 155 times for 1,239 yards. In other words, the Cowboys quarterback is a pocket passer who uses his mobility to chuck it, not tuck it.He looks, plays, and sounds like a top-10 draft choice, and perhaps a March arrest and charge of driving under the influence (he was found not guilty in July) was partly responsible for his slide to pick No. 135. People said the DUI charge was a hindrance before Dak was cleared, said his oldest brother Tad, but even before the arrest, people who get paid to know what theyre talking about had him in the fourth or fifth round.Dak was always a first-round talent. The Tebow comparison kept coming up, but that really shouldve been more of a character comparison. Everything bad you could say about a quarterback, people were saying about Dak before the draft. Hes inaccurate with the ball. His footwork isnt great. Hes never taken a snap under center. He doesnt have the arm strength. Six months later, everyone in the NFL is saying Dak has all those things.And then some. The making of this Dallas star began inside the trailer-park complex in Princeton, Louisiana, where Dak and his siblings were raised by their single mother Peggy who did not accept any show of weakness kindly. As a child Dak would often play tackle football (without pads) with his older, much bigger brothers and their older, much bigger friends. A 6-year-old Dak once took a nasty hit that inspired a fistfight between Tad and the guy who delivered the blow, and that left the youngest Prescott in tears as he ran inside to his mother.Dont come in here crying, Peggy scolded him. If you cant run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.Dak wiped his eyes and headed back outside for more. And once he got on a football field with guys his age, Tad said, it wasnt even fair.He dominated out of the spread offense at Haughton, running and throwing from the shotgun and chasing that childhood dream of someday playing a three-hour drive away for the Cowboys. Somehow, some way, the heavyweight colleges questioned Prescotts worthiness as a big-time quarterback. Rodney Guin, the Haughton head coach back then, said LSU was initially interested in his guy as a tight end. And I dont think that sat well with him, Guin said.Mullen and Mississippi State never wanted him to change positions, and by the time LSU came around to seeing Prescott as a quarterback, it was too late. The Bulldogs werent only getting a prospect tough enough to throw for nearly 400 yards while playing with a torn MCL; they were also getting a prom king who didnt act like one.We had an autistic team manager whose family was moving, Brotherton recalled of a boy named Kyle Brister, and near the end of that kids last game with us I remember turning to the sideline and seeing no players around. Dak had gathered the whole team around him, and they carried him off the field on their shoulders. Thats Dak. After his last game his senior year, when we lost in the state quarterfinals, everyone was sad and crying and thinking how rough it was on Dak. An hour after that game, I walked back in the locker room and Dak was in there throwing the ball around with all these 8-, 9- and 10-year-old kids who worshipped him. Who would do that?Daks impacted people in a lot of different waysDak Prescott was a leader and a unifier before he knew what those words meant. His father Nathaniel is African-American, and his late mother Peggy was a Native American from the Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb. Peggys brother Phil, a professional singer who helped raise her boys, tells the story of taking 3-year-old Dak to the hospital for his asthma condition, and encountering a white woman who shot disapproving looks at the sight of this light-skinned white man holding a black child. Later, as Uncle Phil and his nephew passed the same woman, Dak reached up to grab her hand.And she went to jerk her hand back, Phil said. I saw her reaction and the look on her face. Dak just looked up at her and said, Hi, and she freakin melted. She said, Oh my God, what a beautiful and amazing child. Ill be 85 with Alzheimers, and I wont ever forget that scene. Over the years Ive just seen Dak impact people in a lot of different ways.On the Mississippi State football field, the 6-2, 225-pound Prescott carried his school to its first-ever No. 1 ranking in 2014, a year after his lifes inspiration, Peggy, died of colon cancer. His late sister, Uncle Phil said, is 85 to 90 percent of everything her son is today. That girl worked her butt off, and she told you what she thought. Shed ask Dak, How did practice go? and if he told her hed thrown a couple of interceptions, shed tell him, Well, youd better not practice that s---. He didnt. Prescott was known as a relentless grinder in the weight room and film room. Tad remembered his younger brother reviewing plays on his laptop for five hours of an eight-hour round-trip to Vinton, Louisiana, to visit their grandmother.Brian Johnson, the Bulldogs quarterbacks coach, recalled arriving in Starkville in 2014 and observing the incumbent quarterback in an early morning Valentines Day workout.It was the first time Id seen him in person, Johnson said, and he absolutely crushed it. It was crazy. You wouldve thought Dak was a middle linebacker with the edge and intensity he had. I was like, Holy cow, Ive never seen a quarterback perform like that in a workout. He was ripping off reps, doing a super heavy leg press, just a brutal workout. We had three different groups, and he stayed around for the second one to cheer on guys and help them through it. That told me a lot about Dak as a person.Once upon a time, Johnson had been recruited by Mullen to play for Urban Meyers Utah Utes. He backed up Alex Smith, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 draft, and then recovered from a knee injury to ultimately lead Utah to a 13-0 season and a Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama. Johnson helped Prescott develop his pocket skills with drills designed to help him move his feet while maintaining his balance and keeping his eyes downfield.The quarterback was becoming more and more NFL-ready, even if some scouts and executives missed the point. Prescott had 160 carries as a senior, or 50 fewer than he had as a junior; he had 477 passing attempts in his final season, 81 more than the previous season. He threw 29 touchdown passes against 5 interceptions while completing 66.2 percent of his passes in 2015 (He had 27 TDs, 11 interceptions and a 61.6 completion percentage in 2014). Prescott was doing all of this, of course, while working with a roster of three-star recruits paired against some SEC powers with five-star recruits on the bench.Dak wanted to understand how to beat teams with his mind, Johnson said. He wanted a deeper understanding of the game. He wrote down his goals before each season, and he wanted to master the game. Daks got an extensive memory bank where he can recall things, and if you go back and clearly watch the film, youll see him at times appropriately getting to the fifth read in his progression.The passing game we ran was very much pro-style. Theres some misconception about the spread system not asking the quarterback to do much; we asked Dak to do a lot of different things in protection, in making sure were in the right run play, in understanding defenses. I think Tim Tebow is probably the greatest college football player to ever play, and if you watch film there are some similarities. But in the passing game, youd see Dak do stuff we thought gave him a chance to play on Sundays for a really long time.Tebow was a wobbly-armed first-round pick who won a playoff game in Denver, but who was out of the league in three years. Asked the other day if hed applied any lessons learned in coaching Tebow to coaching Prescott, Mullen called the quarterbacks very, very different players and passed on the opportunity to get more specific. Mullen said he devoted time and energy to the cause of persuading Prescott to check down on certain throws and to wait for a more favorable defensive look on a future play.Making the nonspectacular play, Mullen called it. Prescott has made those plays with the Cowboys. Johnson said he has been impressed with how his former pupil has manipulated his arm angles on certain throws and how he has taken something off his fastball on shallow routes.Hes playing like a well-coached quarterback, Mullen said, and we all take pride in that.The guys got a chanceNow what? Does Prescott-Romo become something of a modern-day Roger Staubach-Craig Morton? Cowboys coach Jason Garrett and his primary advisers on the offensive side of the ball, Scott Linehan and Wade Wilson, will have to figure out what to do when their brittle franchise player, Romo, returns from yet another significant injury. Since Prescott has a chance Sunday to break a Brady record, its worth revisiting the choice the Patriots made 15 years ago.Bledsoe got hurt near the end of a Week 2 loss to the Jets, Brady guided the 0-2 Patriots back into contention, Bledsoe returned in November, and coach Bill Belichick decided to stick with the kid who would win the Super Bowl and become an all-time great.The analogy, said Charlie Weis, Belichicks offensive coordinator at the time, is pretty striking if you think about it.Weis wasnt eagerly volunteering his take as a quarterback whisperer who has been in this position before. He was merely fielding a phone call and agreeing that Prescott-Romo has some Brady-Bledsoe to it. Weis son, Charlie Jr., works for Nick Saban at Alabama, so just as the former Notre Dame and Kansas head coach has watched almost every NFL snap Prescott has taken, he saw a lot of him in the SEC too. Weis loved how Dak took a pounding against a superior Alabama team and responded with a winners composure.Im not shocked at how well hes playing, he said, because I know he was like the Pied Piper at Mississippi State, where everyone followed him. When a young guy is first put in there, youre not really the starting quarterback. Youre just the guy whos starting. But now hes actually growing into the job where hes not just managing the team. Now hes winning games. Hes the starting quarterback.If you want to draw a parallel, its very similar to Tommy in 2001. We didnt start too fast with Tommy -- similar to what theyve done with Dak -- didnt give him too much early, and then it grew from there ... I know if I were the Dallas Cowboys Id feel very, very good about the situation theyre in. Now, instead of hanging on in games until Tony gets back, theyve got two legitimate guys instead of one. Who wouldnt want that situation?Weis, reminded that Brady got hurt in the AFC Championship Game victory over Pittsburgh 15 years ago, and that Bledsoe -- who would be replaced in Dallas years later by Romo, of all people -- came in and threw a touchdown pass. Hes not advocating one over the other right now, but he is impressed with Prescotts willingness to dump off the ball or throw it away when necessary.Any time a young guy gets to his checkdowns, you know the guys got a chance, Weis said. [Prescott] obviously has got the team, and I think thats the toughest thing in the NFL for a rookie quarterback, getting the team. Not the team saying things politically correct, but the team actually believing that when hes out there they will win ballgames.I dont think Dak is a flash in the pan, one of those guys who goes in there for a couple of good games and you never hear from him again. I think he fits what a young Tony was for the Cowboys. ... Somebodys got to have some balls when they make these decisions, like Bill did [in 2001]. But I dont think the Cowboys can make a bad decision here.Five games deep into Prescotts career, its a little hard to believe he has made it a decision at all. He wasnt supposed to be the best rookie on his team, never mind the best rookie in a class that was supposed to feature Jared Goff, a No. 1 overall pick who hasnt even seen the field for the Rams.Dak Prescott entered the league being compared to Tim Tebow, and now hes drawing Year 1 comparisons to a young Tom Brady. The Dallas Cowboys have had a lot of problems over the past 20 years, but the new quarterback has given them a really good one to have. Nike Free 4.0 Flyknit Dame . -- On the field, it was business as usual for Jameis Winston and No. Nike Air Max Udsalg . The showiest items on Calgarys lot were forwards Mike Cammalleri and Lee Stempniak. Both will be unrestricted free agents this summer. http://www.sportsskooutletonline.com/billige-nike-air-max.html . The defending champion beat Gael Monfils of France 7-6 (6), 6-3, while second-seeded Andy Murray of Britain dispatched Edouard Roger-Vasselin, also of France, 6-3, 6-3. Making his first appearance since injuring his wrist a month ago, Del Potro had difficulty with his service games in the first set. Nike Free Dame Tilbud . -- Mike Smith never saw his first NHL goal go in. Nike Air Max 90 Herre . The CFLs leading rusher kept adding to his gaudy numbers this season and scored the winning touchdown with just over two minutes to play. The New Westminster, B.C., native plowed three yards into the end zone for the last score of a heated, see-saw battle between the two teams with the best records in the CFL. MUNCIE, Ind. -- Tayler Persons scored in the final minute of overtime to give Ball State the lead and the Cardinals held off Eastern Kentucky from the line to take a 91-86 victory Saturday.Dillon Avare hit a 3-pointer with 1:16 left in regulation to tie the game at 78-78 and Persons missed two free throws with three seconds left to force overtime.Nick Mayo gave the Colonels (6-5) the lead, 85-84, with his jumper with 2:25 left in the extra period. Persons hit the first of two from the line to tie the game with 1:31 left.ddddddddddddSean Sellers finished with 32 points for Ball State and Persons added another 21 and also notched nine assists. Trey Moses added 18 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.Asante Gist scored 19 points, hitting 5 of 11 from beyond the arc, to lead five double-figure scorers for Eastern Kentucky (6-5). ' ' '