As one of only a few teams actually practicing on Christmas, the Cowboys were noticeably missing Dak Prescott.
After a right shoulder injury forced him to miss the first practices of his NFL career last week, Prescott was estimated not to participate in Wednesday’s practice on the team’s official injury report and coach Jason Garrett offered that the team would have the same approach this week as last week.
“Last week, we really took it day by day, and this week we’ll do the same thing,” Garrett said. “Obviously, he was able to play in the ballgame. Hopefully, we can get him on the same path where he’s able to go on Sunday.”
Though he wasn’t set to do much, Prescott was still in attendance.
“We don’t anticipate him being able to practice very much today,” Garrett said. “He’ll be out there — he was out there for the walk-through and was able to go through the walk-through today. But we don’t anticipate him practicing fully today. He’ll be limited at best.”
With a shot at winning the NFC East in the balance in Week 16, Prescott and the Cowboys lost to the Eagles, 17-9. It was the last chance Dallas had at controlling its own playoff destiny.
In the loss, Prescott struggled, turning in a 74.5 quarterback rating as he went 25-for-44 for 265 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions.
Just how much the shoulder had to play in Prescott’s inefficiency was a topic Garrett wasn’t willing to tackle head-on.
“Guys, to be honest with you, no disrespect, but I don’t want to get into all that right now,” Garrett said. “We talked about the Philly game on Monday and now we’re on to getting ourselves ready for the Washington game. I understand that Dak’s a big story, and I understand why you’re asking the question, but we’ll take them day by day and hopefully he’ll be ready to practice at some point this week and ready to play on Sunday.”
A similar response was to be had in terms of an inquiry as to whether Prescott was progressing as Garrett deferred to his star quarterback.
“You have to ask him specifically on that, but it’s probably in a pretty similar place in terms of how it feels and also how much he’s going to be able to function, at least in the early part of the week.”
Also missing from the Cowboys‘ practice on Christmas was offensive tackle Tyron Smith (back), defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence (shoulder) and linebacker Sean Lee (pectoral/thigh), while offensive linemen La’el Collins (knee) and Zack Martin (ankle) were full participants.
Whether Santa Claus made an appearance on Christmas might not well be known until Sunday’s Redskins (3-12)-Cowboys (7-8) and Eagles (8-7)-Giants (4-11) games have concluded, as Dallas needs a win coupled with a Philadelphia loss to win the NFC East and prolong its season by at least another week.