Dak Prescott didn't realize what he was holding at first. A Dallas Cowboys fan handed him a dark blue Cowboys baseball cap after a training camp practice in Oxnard, California, and it wasn't until he was later with his daughters that he noticed the hand-drawn image stitched into the design: his late brother, Jace.
The moment, first reported by The Dallas Morning News, saw Prescott wear the hat after practice without knowing who had given it to him. He later thanked the fan in an Instagram post on Thursday evening, hugging her in person once the two connected. According to the report, Prescott didn't initially clock the artwork on the cap — he simply thought it was a hat — until he sat down with his daughters and looked closer.
The hat came from Corona's Custom Caps, whose Instagram account shared a reel showing the artwork being drawn, and Custom Caps by Mario also posted a video of Jace Prescott's image taking shape on the cap. NFL reporter Calvin Watkins noted the exchange in a post on X on Thursday, writing that a Cowboys fan had given Prescott a hat featuring his brother.
A Brother's Memory, Carried Onto the Practice Field
Jace Prescott died by suicide in 2020 at age 31. His death transformed his younger brother's public life: Dak Prescott became an advocate for mental health awareness in the years that followed, folding his family's grief into the mission of his charitable foundation. When he realized what the fan had made for him, Prescott's response, per the same account, was simple and direct: “You did it?! Hell yeah, man.” He added that the gift meant a lot to him.
Prescott founded the Faith Fight Finish Foundation in 2017 to honor his mother, Peggy, who died of colon cancer in 2013. The organization expanded its mission in 2020, after Jace's death, to prioritize suicide prevention and mental health awareness — a shift documented by the Dallas Cowboys. That mission is now visible every Sunday: Prescott routinely writes “Ask 4 Help” on his game-day wrist tape, a campaign he launched in September 2021 to nudge people struggling with mental illness toward seeking support.
National Recognition and a Local Fundraising Push
The NFL took notice of that advocacy in February 2023, naming Prescott the 2022 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year — the league's highest off-field honor — specifically for his community leadership and mental health work, as detailed by FOX Sports. He is the fourth Cowboys player in franchise history to win the award. In September 2023, his foundation partnered with New York Jets defensive tackle Solomon Thomas's organization, The Defensive Line, along with national mental health groups, to promote the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline across the NFL, a joint effort documented by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
That kind of visibility matters, according to a national survey published by NORC at the University of Chicago in December 2025, which found that three and a half years after the 988 line launched, only 10 percent of U.S. adults were very or extremely familiar with the number — even though 48 percent said they would use it if experiencing suicidal thoughts. Prescott's foundation kept pushing on the fundraising side too: its annual Faith Fight Finish Foundation Gala in Dallas raised $1.5 million in July for programs spanning suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and colon cancer research, according to Local Profile.
Family Ties Amid a Grinding Training Camp Schedule
The custom hat arrived during a demanding stretch for Prescott, who welcomed his second daughter, Aurora Rayne, with fiancée Sarah Jane Ramos in May 2025, following the birth of their first daughter, Margaret Jane “MJ” Rose, in February 2024 — details reported by FOX 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth. Prescott had reportedly organized a skill-players retreat in Park City, Utah, before camp began, drawing full attendance from invited teammates to build chemistry ahead of the season, as Hoodline detailed in its coverage of the Utah retreat.
Oxnard represents just the first phase of the Cowboys' summer schedule. The team is set to return to Texas for two free public practices and a drone show at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco on August 25 and 26, sessions that will serve as the final open workouts before the preseason finale, according to Hoodline's earlier report on the team's return to Frisco.
