Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott believes his biracial background makes him a more effective team leader. On the Jan. 11 edition of Fox Sports One’s “Undisputed,” former NFL players Ray Lewis and Shannon Sharpe agreed with him.
During the telecast, Lewis insisted that Prescott had an advantage others didn’t because the rookie QB can relate to both Black and white players.
“I think that his perspective on both sides he can weigh in on every level,” Lewis says. “When you think about what this kid has dealt with his whole life, right? If you are in a white community, they’re saying look at this Black kid. If you are in a Black community, they’re saying you a white kid. So he has [had] to adjust. Okay, how do I balance this out? Because, either way — I say this all the time — he’s still a freaking human being.”
After veteran quarterback Tony Romo went down with a back injury early in the preseason, Prescott led the Cowboys to a 13-3 record. Prescott told USA Today Tuesday, Jan. 10 that his close relationship with his Black and white grandparents played a crucial part in his upbringing and that his success as a leader and mediator between Black and white players is at least partly due to his biracial background.
“I grew up in Haughton, Louisiana,” Prescott told USA Today. “I go to my white grandparents’ house, and then I cross the railroad tracks and hang out with my Black grandma. We have English teachers on my white side. My grandpa is a principal. And then you go to the other side and people have been in jail.
“I was put in all those different situations,” he said. “I’ve been in situations where I was the only Black guy. We’re in a time now where nobody wants to see that. But it still happens. Depending on where you come from, it happens.
“To be able to wipe that clean and see and live both sides, it’s just who I am. Being mixed allows me to connect with everyone.”
Co-host Sharpe said his experience as a Black man helps him identify more closely with other Black men than it does with men of other races, tacitly co-signing Prescott’s assertion.
“It definitely helps … I communicate with Ray differently than I do with you [Skip Bayless],” Sharpe says. “You communicate differently with your friends than you communicate with me. But as a leader, it is your job to lead everybody. You can’t lead them all the same.”
Sharpe said the No. 1 thing about leading is about winning and that winning trumps everything, including race and ethnicity. “You can relate to a lot of different people,” he says. “Can you lead us and are we winning as you are leading us?”
