Dak Prescott Opens Up About His Brother Jace’s Suicide And His Own Struggles With Depression

Dak Prescott is opening up about the death of his brother Jace Prescott.

In a new interview with Graham Bensinger, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback talked about his brother, who committed suicide back in April. Dak and his other brother, Tad, said that Jace struggled with being the primary caregiver of their mother #PeggyPrescott, as she battled colon cancer.

“Jace at the time was finishing with school and was home, was with her, and watched it,” Dak explained. “She couldn’t necessarily hide it from Jace because he was there every day. He saw the times where she would have to spend probably 10-plus hours throwing up, this and that, and saw the medicine she had to take.” Their mother pushed for Dak to stay at Mississippi State University during her fight. Following her death in 2013, Dak said that Jace struggled with explaining what he went through during his time caring for their mother.

“You can’t even put into words the burden,” he explained. “It’s something only Jace knew. And he didn’t necessarily share that. Jace never was really much of a talker.” He continued: “When something like that was a huge burden on him, he didn’t know how to share it — didn’t know how to be vulnerable about it.” Tad shared “everything seemed fine” when he saw Jace just three days before he died of suicide, PEOPLE Magazine reports.

When he first heard the news, Dak says his eyes filled with endless tears. “I mean, obviously tears and tears and tears,” Dak said of his reaction. “I mean, I sat there and tried to gather what had happened, and wanted to ask why for so many reasons … and as much as you want to ask why as much as this, I mean, I know my brother, and as we said, he had a lot of burdens on him.” His brother’s death on top of the pandemic left Dak dealing with depression. “All throughout this quarantine and this offseason, I started experiencing emotions I’ve never felt before,” Dak said.

“Anxiety for the main one. And then, honestly, a couple of days before my brother passed, I would say I started experiencing depression,” he continued. “And to the point of, I didn’t want to work out anymore. I didn’t know necessarily what I was going through, to say the least, and hadn’t been sleeping at all.” Dak said that he wants others who may be struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts to seek help. “He had a lot of tough things, and my sense of saying that is it showed me how vulnerable we have to be as humans, how open we have to be,” Dak said of his brother, PEOPLE reports.

“Because our adversities, our struggles, what we go through is always gonna be too much for ourselves and maybe too much for even one or two people, but never too much for a community or too much for people in the family that you love,” he continued. “So, you have to share these things.”