Jackson Free Press

Nearly everyone this preseason has gone gaga over Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott’s performance this NFL preseason by. Well, unless you’re Fox Sports radio personality Colin Cowherd.

Unless you’re Cowherd or thinks like he does, it is hard not to be impressed with the way Prescott has played in two games. It is the preseason, after all, but with each throw and each play, the budding legend of Dak grows.

In his first start in his first game, Prescott went 10 of 12 passing for 139 yards with two touchdown passes. The two incompletions were drops from a backup tight end against the Los Angeles Rams.

The Internet went wild, and rightly so. Prescott’s performance was great for a guy who was picked in the fourth round and expected to sit behind Kellen Moore as the third-string guy. Instead, Moore broke his leg, and Prescott was thrust into the backup spot.

It seemed right to slow down the hype train with just one game under his belt. But Prescott went on to put on a show in his second preseason game.

When Dallas played the Miami Dolphins this past weekend, Prescott got to work with both the starters and No. 2 players on the depth chart. It might have been a new week, but it was the same performance, if not better, than week one.

Prescott went 12 for 15 passing for 199 yards and two touchdown passes and ran two more in for touchdowns. In his second game, Prescott had a four-touchdown game, has yet to throw an interception and has taken just one sack.

Cowherd wasn’t impressed, but the rest of the Internet was going bonkers for Prescott. In the preseason, Prescott has gone 22 of 27 passing for 338 yards with four touchdowns passing and two touchdowns rushing.

He has an 81.5 completion percentage and a 158.3 passer rating. The former Mississippi State University star leads all rookie quarterbacks in nearly every passing stat.

Cowherd might not be impressed yet, but maybe he can be convinced if he sees the stats.

So far in the preseason, 22 quarterbacks, including Prescott, have seen some sort of playing time. Those 22 quarterbacks include the 15 that were drafted and the rest who were signed as undrafted free agents.

During the draft, seven quarterbacks were drafted ahead of Prescott, and one was drafted just four spots behind him. One of the quarterbacks, Christian Hackenberg, who the New York Jets drafted out of Pennsylvania State University, has yet to even take one snap in the preseason.

For our purposes, only quarterbacks who have attempted 20 or more attempted passes will get a full rundown. That means Cleveland Browns quarterback Cody Kessler, drafted out of the University of Southern California in the third round, doesn’t make the list with his five pass attempts.

The first overall pick …

The 2016 Olympic games are done, and the USA nearly lapped the field in the medal count. It wasn’t even close for first place in medals, but second and third place was a race.

When the Olympics ended with the closing ceremony, the U.S. had won 121 total medals. That out-did the previous best of 110 from Beijing in 2008.

The U.S. finished 51 medals ahead of China, which had 70 total medals and finished in second place. Great Britain finished in third with 67 total medals.

Team USA was comprised of 554 athletes, and 213 of those took home a medal. In the 27 sports that the U.S. had athletes competing, they brought home a medal in 20 of those sports.

Swimming and track and field are where the U.S. pulled away from the rest of the world. In those two sports, the U.S. won 65 medals, which would have been good for fourth place in total medals if the sports were their own country.

The reason the U.S. was able to dominate the Olympics was because of its women. Of the 121 medals the U.S. won, women received 61, the men received 55, and five medals were in mixed events such as equestrian and mixed-doubles tennis.

The U.S. women won 27 of the team’s 46 gold medals, and if the women were their own country, that would tie them with Great Britain second most gold medals. The 61 medals the women won would have landed them fourth on the medal count if they were their own nation.

This is the second Olympics where the women have brought home more medals than the men. In London, the women won 58 medals to 45 medals for the men, and those Olympics games were the first where the women had ever won more medals than the men.

The U.S. women won three more medals in Rio than they did in London, but the U.S. men tried to catch up by winning 10 more medals in Rio.

This has been a climb for the U.S. women since the 1970s. In 1972, congress passed Title IX, which barred sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding. At the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, the U.S. women won 23 medals, and the men won 71 medals.

Title IX led to high-school and college sports for women growing at a faster rate and eventually led to the U.S. women becoming a powerhouse on the global sports stage.

The Olympics has added more women’s sports to the games over the years such as women’s boxing. That has led to more medal opportunities for women at the games than in the past.

Like in London, the U.S. women outnumbered the men on team USA in Rio. The women made up 291 members of the 554-member team, with the U.S. men making up the other 263 members.

Tony Romo takes back the role of starting quarterback job the Dallas Cowboys tonight, Aug. 19, at 7 p.m. against the Miami Dolphins. This will be the first game action in the preseason for Romo, who is recovering from an injury-plagued 2015 campaign.

It seems like a good bet that Romo will only play two to three series in this game. It would be shocking to see him play past the first quarter. However, when Romo’s night is done, there is still plenty of reasons to stay around and watch this game on the NFL Network.

Former Mississippi State University star Dak Prescott is one reason to watch until his night is done. Last week against the Los Angeles Rams, Prescott had perhaps one of the best NFL debuts in Cowboys history.

Sure, it was a preseason game, and the Rams didn’t play every starter or even have a game plan. But Prescott started the game in front of nearly 90,000 fans, and Los Angeles wasn’t playing the game with a defense full of guys who are going to be out on the street next week.

In that preseason game, the Rams played both starters and backups who will play a big part of the team’s success or failure this season. Prescott had a great night even for the preseason, and he could lock up the backup job in the next three games.

Prescott was as sharp as any quarterback in the league. Even in the preseason, quarterbacks still have to read the defense and make throws. It wasn’t like Prescott was throwing against air.

He completed 10 out of 12 passes for 139 yards and two touchdowns, and his only two incompletions were drops. He threw some nice passes that included a couple of back-shoulder throws and some pinpoint passes into tight windows.

Now it will be interesting to see how Prescott follows his big game from last week. He will have even more pressure on him to show the same level of play, but he will have to work with mostly backups this time.

Can he get in good plays for the Cowboys working with the second- and third-string offense? Can he overcome the inevitable false starts or holding penalties that tend to happen with backup linemen in a game?

These are things to watch, along with how he controls the huddle and how he manages the offense in down and distance situations. He will be throwing to receivers who might be the Cowboys’ third or fourth wide receivers if they make the team instead of Dez Bryant and the starters.

How does he handle it when players make mistakes and run the wrong routes? There is a difference between starting a preseason game and coming in after the starters have left the game.

Prescott has a chance to show that last week wasn’t some fluke or great luck. He has a chance to …

New Orleans-based hip-hop artist Boyfriend released a new single Wednesday, Aug. 17, that features fellow New Orleanian Big Freedia, known to her fans as the "Queen of Bounce."

The track, titled "Marie Antoinette," is an ode to lavish lifestyles and over-the-top indulgence, all built on a bass-heavy, harpsichord-laden track from New Orleans deejay DXXXY. And of course, the song includes a few references to its famously extravagant - and very deceased - namesake, such as the oft-attributed quote, "Let them eat cake," and the lyric, "I go so hard I might just lose my head."

Besides their shared hometown, the two artists have another common distinction: Both have run into censorship troubles over Mississippi performances this year.

In February, the Dollar Box Showroom in Hattiesburg cancelled Big Freedia's performance due to pressure from the state Alcoholic Beverage Control's laws regarding "gyrating." In April, Oxford restaurant and music venue Proud Larry's cancelled Boyfriend's show, which would have featured burlesque elements, to avoid similar problems with the ABC.