Dak Prescott named most valuable player in NFC East over the last five years according to PFF WAR

If you’re looking for a stat that suggests Dak Prescott shouldn’t be paid the dollar value he’s looking for, turn away, now. Instead, we have yet another stat/analytic that suggests the Cowboys need to get this deal done sooner, rather than later.

According to Pro Football Focus, Dak Prescott ranks out as the NFC East’s Most Valuable Player based on their metric called WAR.

Before we get into this, let’s take a look at what WAR really means by PFF’s standards.

METHODOLOGY

Broadly, the PFF WAR model does these things, in order:

Determine how good a given player was during a period of time (generally a season) using PFF grades;

Map a player’s production to a “wins” value for his team using the relative importance of each facet of play;

Simulate a team’s expected performance with a player of interest and with an average player participating identically in his place. Take the difference in expected wins (e.g., Wins Above Average);

Determine the average player with a given participation profile’s wins above replacement player, assuming a team of replacement-level players is a 3-13 team;

Add the terms in the last two calculations to get that player’s WAR.

Succeeding inside your own division is step one to being successful in the National Football League. Being named the NFC East’s most valuable player according to the WAR metric is not something that should be taken lightly. What this tells us is rather simple, Dak is really, really good, and really, really valuable to the team’s success. As you can see from the rankings, all four NFC East quarterbacks hold four of the top five slots, given that the quarterback position is the most important position on the football field at all times, this makes plenty of sense.

This metric tells us that Prescott is extremely valuable, and it tells us he’s really good at being valuable.

Also telling us, Dak Prescott is very good.