After the NFL announced Dak Prescott as the recipient of the 2022 Walter Payton Man of the Year award, the Cowboys quarterback discussed his win in an interview on the official NFL website. “That’s something I’ve always said, that I hope that when I finish this game, they can say he was a helluva player, but he was a much better person,” he said.
The reasons for Prescott’s win are numerous and date back to before the start of the 2022 NFL season. For example, during widespread protests in 2020, he made a $1 million donation to an initiative intended to combat systematic racism in policing. Then, in 2022, he took over for the 1978 season’s award winner — and former Dallas Cowboy — Roger Staubach as an honorary chairman of the Children’s Cancer Fund Gala. He also heads his own charity organization called Faith, Fight, Finish, dedicated to the memory of his mother, through which he contributes to these and other initiatives.
It’s because of this frequent and multifaceted charity work that Prescott earned the right to wear the likeness of a guy who looks like Darth Vader for the rest of his NFL career. Calais Campbell and Russell Wilson, who won the Walter Payton Man of the Year award in 2019 and 2020, respectively, continue to sport the patch on their jerseys, and Prescott will likely do the same.
