Prescott’s devastating right ankle injury proves how unfailingly cruel and callous the NFL can be.

There are times when this sport is so unfailingly cruel, and not just in the more familiar callous, corporate, soul-crushing way.

Dak Prescott, a player who has overcome immense adversity and tragedy, who has traversed countless life obstacles and plowed an uphill path to becoming the megastar starting quarterback of the most popular franchise in the sport, was carted off the field on Sunday in tears with the kind of gruesome ankle injury that causes bottlenecking on the highway out of spectator curiosity. The Cowboys announced Prescott suffered a compound fracture and dislocation of his right ankle. It’s an inevitability that we won’t see him again this season. It’s a legitimate question (for another time) as to whether he played his final snap for the Cowboys.

Prescott rescued Dallas from irrelevance in the post-Romo era,