On Jan. 2, 2024, five days before the Dallas Cowboys’ regular-season finale, the franchise’s palatial, constellation-heavy headquarters are nearly empty. Only cubicle dwellers fill the cavernous space with sound, until Dak Prescott enters, strolling toward the locker room with his physical therapist, Luke Miller, in tow.
Both head to a small space attached to the trainer’s room, where Prescott reclines atop a blue exam table. The quarterback is lying flat on his back, a stack of towels resting on his stomach. Miller goes to work on his body, kneading over tattoos, scars and the expected welts, tight spots, and painful bruises accumulated over 17 weeks of an NFL season. Still, Prescott is giddy. The important stuff, a long time coming, is now : six weeks as potentially transformative as any stretch in his full, celebrated, scrutinized, loss-heavy life.
Because this is Rayne Dakota Prescott, manifesting outcomes is expected. He bought the backpack he now carries everywhere in Los Angeles last summer, the purchase driven less by the brand (Louis Vuitton) and more by its initials (LV), which remind him hourly where Super Bowl LVIII will take place next month.
He also continues listening to the playlist he made before the season. Prescott shaped last year’s collection in honor of his golden birthday (turning 29 on July 29, 2023). This year, every selection spoke to Las Vegas, the Super Bowl, or its current iteration, LVIII (58). He listens to only the mix—titled —on game days, to remind him of what he wants, what matters and what’s ahead. He estimates that 60% of the selections have “way deeper meaning” beyond just raising adrenaline levels.
There are 145 tracks total, and the choices—hip-hop, mumble rap, country, faith-based, old-school, rock, country rap—run the musical gamut. There are many artists with Lil in their stage names (Lil Durk, Lil Baby, Lil Kee and, the OG, Lil Wayne). Some tunes speak to those he lost—his mother, Peggy (colon cancer, 2013); his brother Jace (suicide, ’20)—reminding him of the best times they spent together. “Songs that usually, when I hear them, take me beyond the song in that moment,” he says. “A place. A memory. “Don’t Stop Believin’,” from Mississippi State. Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight,” takes me right back to my high school field pregame …”
The meaning laced into Prescott’s existence seems to have heightened since we last sat down like this in 2021. The shift owes, in part, to a few more birthdays, plus two seasons that didn’t yield what he wanted and one more that still could.
It also comes from the pictures he shows off on his iPhone. They’re from earlier that morning, from an appointment with his partner, Sarah Jane Ramos, who is roughly 31 weeks pregnant. There they are, inside an office, the quarterback of America’s Team playing Dr. Dak. He’s holding the end of a sonogram, running it tenderly over her stomach.
In this moment, Prescott is present, vulnerable, human; just a dad-to-be, like any expecting parent. He’s more interested in discussing what the ultrasound revealed than whatever debates and misconceptions forever hover over his football career. He saw baby girl’s legs! Her profile! Some of her—his adorable words—. Ramos makes the same joke regularly, saying that their baby has “been living inside of me for nine months to look just like you.” Ha! Prescott is blessed, and he knows that, but blessed becomes existential when he hears the baby’s heart thump.
The “coolest” part, on this Tuesday in early January, is when the doctor asks for a finger, then takes the digit Prescott offers and places it on his partner’s stomach, atop the baby’s back. “Rub your little girl’s feet at night every night before you go to bed,” the doctor told him.
Prescott has done the math: 31 weeks, typical pregnancy, means he should have a baby girl not even one month after the game he most desperately wants to win. “Trying to manifest a championship and a baby back-to-back,” he says. “That’s the plan. For her to come into this world with a Super Bowl champion dad.”
What Prescott is manifesting—the ultimate manifestation; this ending, too perfect for Disney, not guaranteed, but more possible each week—is laid out in the lyrics.
