Josh Butler once played quarterback at Mesquite High School before switching to cornerback. Now with the Dallas Cowboys since 2023, he has lined up against franchise quarterback Dak Prescott in practice. He’s watched Prescott in the film room, on the field, as well as off it. So when critics took a shot at his quarterback, he wasn’t going to let it slide.

Butler posted a TikTok video with the floating caption “No Dak hate will NOT be tolerated ❌” recently, and opened up with a specific grievance.

“Somebody tried to argue with me and say Dak Prescott not top 5,” Butler said in the clip. “My quarterback? Look, you can argue with your mama, your daddy, your sister, your granddaddy, I don’t care. You’re not gonna argue with me because y’all don’t see what I see. And mind you, these just people on the internet. They’re just talking. So, do they opinion really matter? No. Not at all. Y’all like, ‘Josh B, why are you talking about it?’ Because I’m not finna go and let them sit there and lie.”

Butler is in the building every day and sees what Prescott does for the team. When the Cowboys returned to practice after Marshawn Kneeland’s death in November 2025, Prescott stepped directly into the team’s grief and tried to help his teammates.

“It’s just the more we can talk, the more we can connect, that’s the only good, honestly, at this moment,” he told reporters at the time. “Reminds us how important it is to not just know these jersey numbers, but to know the family and to know things beyond this building.”

Josh Butler was paying attention back then, too. On November 7, 2025 – the day after Kneeland passed away by sui**** at 24 – Butler posted an Instagram story of Kneeland’s locker, filled with flowers left by teammates, and wrote: “Love you dawg.” 

Prescott tried to help his teammates a lot through that trying time. And that’s the off-field presence that Butler keeps coming back to.

“Outside football, he gets a lot of hate, and I don’t understand it,” Butler continued in his clip. “He does a lot of stuff for the community, he does a lot of stuff for mental health, he does a lot of stuff to help people out. Y’all need to stop doing that. That’s not okay. We are normal people too. We normal human beings. Just cause we got a different job or whatever, and y’all like the sport, doesn’t mean treat us like s***.”

When Kneeland passed away, Prescott called it a “triggering day for many reasons” – his brother, Jace, had died by sui**** five years earlier. When the Cowboys took the field after Kneeland’s death, Prescott taped “ONE LOVE RIP 94” on his wrist. 94 was Kneeland’s jersey number, and “one love” was the phrase Kneeland used the most. Prescott explained what it meant to him:

“It’s one love,” Prescott said. “We get one life, right? We’re responsible for being the best neighbor to the person next to us, giving them everything that they need in life. To show the world one love, and try to go out there, and allow my relationship with my teammates to hopefully be an example of that.”

That’s what Butler watched. And that’s the version of Prescott that critics who argue about quarterback rankings never talk about. And Butler is ready to defend his QB against those critics.

“But all in all, I’m gonna say this to say this, okay? Dak Prescott is a top-five quarterback in the NFL,” Butler concluded his clip. “I don’t care [about] your opinion. I don’t care where you’re from. I don’t care who your favorite team is. You can fight me about it.”

Josh Butler’s argument about Prescott and mental health isn’t general. Prescott has spent years building something specific around it, starting from the worst moment of his own life.

Dak Prescott’s off-field defense

Prescott’s mother, Peggy, died of colon cancer. Instead of letting the loss break him, he responded by founding the Faith Fight Finish Foundation as a tribute to his mother in 2013. The foundation’s work also honors his brother Jace and has expanded to cover mental health awareness and suicide prevention alongside its original colon cancer research mission.

In September 2023, Prescott explained directly where the foundation came from: 

“After my brother Jace passed away due to suicide, I had to deal with many emotions, but I learned how to cope through the amazing mental health support I received,” Prescott said. “This is what the nonprofit organization I founded, Faith Fight Finish, focuses on mental illness by helping people always know that they are not alone, that there is help out there to help you get through the darkest moments in your life.”

At that time, his foundation had partnered with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Crisis Text Line, and Vibrant Emotional Health for a month-long initiative during National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.

Prescott also served as honorary chair of the Children’s Cancer Fund gala. In 2024, Executive Director Jennifer Arthur explained what his involvement meant to the organization:

“Dak was the first person we called and said, ‘Would you be a part of this mental health initiative launch,’ and he didn’t pause for a second,” Arthur said. “He was the first investor in the mental health initiative.”

That year, Prescott had helped raise $2.1 million for the Pauline Allen Gill Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children’s Health.

People who only know Prescott from the Cowboys’ postseason record don’t know this version of him. The hate Josh Butler is pushing back against doesn’t account for any of it – the foundation, the partnerships, the work he’s done for mental health and pediatric cancer research. Critics run the football argument, and Butler is making a different one entirely.

As for the on-field narrative, if we talk about just last season, Dak Prescott balled out. In a performance reminiscent of his 2019 peak, he threw for 4,552 yards (3rd in the league) and 30 touchdowns (4th in the league). It was the defense that let him down week after week, and that’s what the Cowboys spent this offseason rebuilding.

Prescott spent the offseason engaged in private workouts with his wide receivers CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens. He even showed up for the first day of the Cowboys’ voluntary workouts. None of it was mandatory, but he still made an effort for his teammates.

Josh Butler has watched Dak Prescott lead through an injury comeback, a locker room in grief, and another offseason of online noise. Through it all, Dak has always kept his team first. That’s what Butler is defending, and that’s what makes Prescott a top-5 quarterback in the NFL.