Dak Prescott helped the Dallas Cowboys vice president avoid early cancer

ARLINGTON, Texas – A few months ago, Dak Prescott decided on this year’s theme for the NFL’s initiative, “My Cause My Cleats.” He chose “early detection” with the sub-message “seeing the invisible.”

The theme was an ode to his late mother, Peggy Prescott, who died of colon cancer in 2013. She didn’t know she had cancer until stage four. Otherwise it was too late.

In the 11 years since her death, Dak has fulfilled much of his foundation’s mission, helping others detect cancer before it is too late. As part of this initiative, the Prescott Foundation provided funding to test the Cowboys coaching staff at training camp in Oxnard last summer. Using Galleri, a new test that can find signals for up to 50 different types of cancer, the coaching team and selected others were screened.

Coincidentally, Tad Carper, the Cowboys’ senior vice president of communications, was also tested. “I was just lucky that Dak contacted me and said, ‘Why don’t you take it too?'” Carper recalled.

A few weeks later, Carper received a call he never expected. Doctors found signs in Carper’s blood work that suggested cancer in the head or neck area.

“Well, I got some bad news because we discovered a suspicious mass on your tonsil,” the doctor told Carper. He later discovered that it was Level 2.

Tad remembers feeling “just grateful and immediately blessed” in the moments immediately following the call, but admits that “the rest of the afternoon was kind of a blur.”

“You are going through a period of dangerous introspection.”

After receiving the call at work, Carper had to go about his daily tasks. After finishing a production call with a network talent, he and Dak were about to leave the room when Carper shouted, “Wait a minute, I have something else… and it’s a big deal.”

“The first person I told was Dak,” Carper admitted. “Dude, you probably literally saved my life.”

Since then, Carper has been sharing his story about early detection with the sole goal of encouraging others to do the same.

“I have spent my decades-long career on the other side of the camera… encouraging other people to share their stories. It would have been very hypocritical of me if I hadn’t done that now.”

“I just want to spread the word,” he continued, “and encourage others to be willing to go out and get tested, even if you feel well. This is the best time, the best Time to do something like that.

Carper is expected to begin radiation therapy in the coming weeks. As he completes the first part of his battle with cancer, he reflects deeply on the last three months since he took the first test on August 18th.

“If I had waited another two to three months when my throat started hurting… The doctors told me that we would be having a very different conversation than the one we are having now.”

Carper didn’t join the Cowboys until 2022. The move came after he decided to retire from a long career with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Before taking the job in Dallas, he and his wife, Ann, considered whether this was the right move. Three years and one test later: “Now we know why, now we know.”

His wife was the rock during this difficult time. He attributes his ability to find the good in his journey to his wife’s faith and has drawn on it himself in recent months. “I really couldn’t ask for more.”

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Carper claims.

A test that could have possibly saved Dak’s mother’s life could be the reason it saves Tad’s life.

“I have a battle scar on the side of my neck here,” describes Carper. “It’s more of a sign of something that changed my life.”

When Dak first chose his cause for this year’s My Cause My Cleats game, no one had any idea that Tad Carper had cancer.

As fate would have it, Dak’s cause had a chance to see what the Cowboys couldn’t. And in the process they might have even saved one of their lives.