Dak Prescott mom was confirmed dead by doctors for …
Dak learned that his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in the summer of 2012, and a year and a half later, she died on Nov. 3, 2013, at the age of 52. The NFL star made an appearance on the Today show in 2023 to advocate for colon cancer testing and lit up when recalling memories with his mom.
He doesn’t mind; his only concern is when his hand slips and his signature zig-zags off the blue number on one jersey. He’s wondering if he should try to fix it? Don’t worry, a team staffer quickly assures him. There are plenty more. With a few piles down and several more piles to go, Prescott shrugs. “This is easy,” he says.
This unflappable attitude has distinguished Prescott ever since he arrived in the Dallas area, the fourth-round draft pick who was thrust into a starting role in the first game of his pro career, and played so well that he couldn’t be taken off the field even after Tony Romo returned from his back injury. Prescott’s second season has presented different challenges, a 2–3 start after last year’s 13-3 record, but the pressure of being the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys doesn’t compare to the conversation he had in the summer of 2012 before his redshirt freshman year of college: His mom, Peggy, broke the news to her youngest son that she had Stage 4 colon cancer. “If you’re not tripping,” Prescott replied, “I’m not tripping.”
Peggy Prescott succumbed to the disease in November 2013, just as her son’s star on the football field was taking off. After her death, he would catapult Mississippi State to the No. 1 ranking for five weeks during the fall of 2014, and he’d earn the most important job in Dallas, where he changed his jersey to No. 4 in honor of Peggy’s birthday. If you know anything about Prescott, you almost certainly know about his mom. That’s how Prescott wants it to be.
He was his mom’s greatest motivation during her battle against cancer, as Peggy looked forward to the trips to Starkville, Miss., for home games, even as she lost her hair from chemotherapy and was weakened to the point of needing to be pushed into the stadium in a wheelchair. In turn, Peggy’s memory underlies everything her son does, from the notes on his phone he writes her the night before games to his openly sharing with a stranger the fact that he’ll be getting regular colonoscopies starting at age 40 and has considered doing genetic testing to assess his own cancer risk.
“After my mom got sick, she told me, ‘Allow me to be your story. All the greats have a story,’ ” Prescott says. “At that time I was like, ‘Hell no, I don’t need a story if that means my mom is sick.’ But fast forward, and that’s what I’m going to do. Because that was her—I wouldn’t say wish—that was moreso her command to me.”
Prescott knew something was wrong one night in August 2012 when he received a text from his mom: Give me a call when you can. Peggy and Dak had an especially close bond—he was the youngest of her three boys, and after his parents divorced when he was a toddler, she tried to be mom, dad and coach all in one. In their mobile home near Haughton, La., his two brothers slept in one bedroom, while Dak and his mom shared the other room until he was in high school. So, in other words, if this were a normal phone call, she would have just called.
Prescott called her back from the hotel where the Mississippi State football team was staying during training camp. Peggy, who was several hours and one state away, had already told the assistant coach who’d recruited him, John Hevesy, the news she was breaking that day. Her two older sons already knew; and Dak’s father; and her parents, brother and sisters; and Dak’s high school coach, too. She put off telling her youngest boy because she didn’t want to disrupt his studies or football aspirations—but she knew she needed to tell him before the season started.
Peggy found out about the cancer after she had been experiencing fatigue and shortness of breath from walking short distances or a single flight of stairs. “My mom was funny as it gets,” Prescott says. “She was like, I know I’m overweight, but sh–, I’m not that out of shape.” She was always on the go, making all of her kids’ games as they were growing up and working at two different truck stops as a manager. Finally, she’d gone to see her doctor, and that’s when they found that her red-blood cell counts were dangerously low. Her habit of picking up a bag of ice at Sonic on her way to work suddenly made sense—craving ice is a symptom of anemia. With further testing, they discovered the underlying reason: A mass in her colon.
Over the next 15 months, Prescott experienced the roller coaster cancer patients and their families unwillingly ride. Peggy had the tumor removed through surgery, but the cancer had metastasized to her lungs and liver. Peggy began chemotherapy, trying one treatment until it was proven ineffective, and then switching to another. She’d moved back to her hometown of Vinton, La., to help take care of her parents when her father began showing signs of early Alzheimer’s disease, before she was diagnosed. The hospital where she was being treated was in Shreveport, close to a four-hour drive away in the northern part of the state, so family members pitched in to drive her once a month, and then once every other week, as the frequency of her treatments increased.
