Pick-six preview: Packers at Cowboys

Here is our first look at Sunday’s Week 5 game between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys.

Green Bay Packers (3-1) at Dallas Cowboys (3-1)

The vitals: 3:25 p.m. Sunday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

TV: Fox (Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Erin Andrews).

Series: Packers lead 15-13. They won the last two games – both at Dallas – and have won the last three road games in the series.

The last time: The Packers beat the Cowboys 35-31 in Oct. 8, 2017. Aaron Rodgers hit Davante Adams with a 12-yard touchdown pass with 11 seconds remaining for the decisive score. Adams had two touchdown receptions, Jordy Nelson had another and Aaron Jones had 125 rushing yards, and Damarious Randall had a 21-yard pick-six.

The quarterback

Dak Prescott is second in the league with a 72.4 percent completion rate, second with 9.0 yards per attempt, fourth with nine touchdown passes and fourth with a 113.7 passer rating. His catchable-ball rate of 86.6 percent is far ahead of Atlanta’s Matt Ryan (81.7) for No. 1 in the NFL, according to Sports Info Solutions. It’s relatively easy to throw catchable passes in a dink-and-dunk offense but Prescott is a big-play quarterback. His average pass travels 9.8 yards downfield – 2.6 yards further than last season – and he’s 10-of-20 on passes thrown at least 20 yards, making him second-most accurate deep-ball quarterback through Week 4. However, in the 12-10 loss at New Orleans on Sunday night, Prescott was a mundane 22-of-33 passing for 223 yards and zero touchdowns.

His top weapon

The offense runs through running back Ezekiel Elliott, who had 2,001 total yards last season and will be attacking a downtrodden Packers run defense. After a training camp holdout, Elliott is seventh in the league with 324 rushing yards. Since entering the NFL in 2016, Elliott has rushed for 4,372 yards. That’s 712 more yards than the Rams’ Todd Gurley, 816 more yards than Philadelphia’s Jordan Howard and more than 1,200 yards ahead of everyone else. Last year, when Elliott led the NFL with 1,434 rushing yards, he had 905 yards after contact, according to Sports Info Solutions. That number alone would have ranked 15th in the league.

Getting defensive

Since the start of the 2017 season, Dallas defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence is tied for fourth in the NFL with 27.5 sacks. In four games to start this season, he has 2.5 sacks and nine pressures. He rushes mostly from the defense’s left side, which means he’ll face veteran right tackle Bryan Bulaga. If the shoulder injury that sidelined Bulaga for the second half of last week’s loss to Philadelphia keeps him on the sideline, it will be Lawrence against Alex Light.

Noteworthy number

28: Prescott has completed all 28 of his third-quarter passes. He is 28-of-28 passing for a league-leading 457 yards with three touchdowns and a 154.5 rating. By contrast, Aaron Rodgers is 14-of-29 for 165 yards with one touchdown, no interceptions and a 77.5 rating.

The big picture

Courtesy NFL Communications