OXNARD, Calif. — On Saturday, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott will turn 30.
"Oh, he a old man," wide receiver CeeDee Lamb said with a laugh. "He hate to hear it, but he's a old man."
Prescott said this came up on their trip to Georgia a couple weeks ago.
"Who's the oldest here?," Prescott said someone asked. "And you know, I had my head down taking notes, and I didn't even think to look up. Heard a couple coughs and heard my name, and looked up, and everybody was giving me crap for being the old guy. In the skill positions, I got Cooks beat by a couple months."
"Exactly!" receiver Brandin Cooks said with a dose of glee. "You talk about I'm old! You know what I mean?"
Fortunately for Prescott, in quarterback terms he's still in the middle of his career, which gives him ample time to bounce back from his 15-interception season in 2022.
"The guys that know who I am, how I show up each day, how I approach it," he said, "understand that numbers don't always tell what it is."
Prescott has thrown a pick on each of the first two days of camp. One of those picked was dropped by his receiver and was clearly not Prescott's fault. The other one, well, that probably was.
"I'm not going to stop being aggressive," he said. "Ten or tipped, whatever you say it is, I am going to lessen my interceptions. That's a guarantee."
Prescott joked about a viral quote that went wrong -- in which he was misquoted as saying he wouldn't throw "ten" interceptions this season. In reality, he was talking about all the tipped picks he had in 2022, and how those would be decreased this season.
But in order to make good on that guarantee, this work in camp is pivotal.
"Timing is the only thing that you got in the NFL," Lamb said. "That'll set the difference between an interception and a touchdown. So, we're just getting that down."
And it also helps to have Cooks out there as a new target.
"You gotta choose one," Cooks said of he and Lamb. "If we both on the same side, that safety's gotta choose one. And no one is guarding him one-on-one. So if they choose to stay over the top of me on something, then CeeDee wide open. And vice versa."
Plus, Prescott is already showing the new guy what he's already shown everyone else on this roster.
"The way he's able to lead. I talked to some of the guys, the other day. Leading, you just can't fake it," Cooks said. "And the way Dak leads, so authentic. You'll follow that man anywhere."
Because nothing is daunting to Dak Prescott.
"It's my past experience in life, that I can lean on," Prescott said. "The only thing I can do is get up and keep swinging. And that's exactly what I'm going to do."