A year after Marshawn Kneeland’s death, Dak Prescott is still finding ways to keep his late teammate part of the Cowboys. Ahead of the November 6 anniversary, the quarterback opened up about how he wants to honor Kneeland, the 2024 second-round pick who died at 24.

“Just trying to honor him by creating those conversations, by creating that group,” Prescott said, via Dallas beat reporter Jon Machota. “I think it’s gonna be big. I think it’s gonna be needed, just even hearing from the introduction about it, how guys felt about it. I’m excited to do it. At the same time, you’re honoring Marshawn. You’re getting to bring up conversations of how people felt about him and what he meant to us.

“…He’s missed. He’s missed greatly from a lot of people around here, and in this organization. I appreciate them honoring him. Every time I step on that field, I say a prayer and I end with, ‘God allow me to do this for Marshawn and people that can’t do it any more.’”

Prescott and the Cowboys will mark the first anniversary of Marshawn Kneeland’s death on Friday, and spoke about what the team has done since to support mental health. Much of that work runs through a program called Huddle 94, named after the number Kneeland wore.

It sits alongside the mental health resources the club already provides, but it puts the players in charge.

“(It’s) allowing us to create conversations and get together in smaller groups that talk about life and talk about things that are stressors to us that, if it were something that we had, may have helped Marshawn,” Prescott said. “It may have been something that would have been a resource for him to prevent what inevitably happened.”

It started on the night of Nov. 5, 2025, when Kneeland drove off after a Texas trooper tried to pull him over. His car crashed in Frisco, and he left it on foot. While police were searching, his girlfriend called to say he had a gun, had dealt with mental illness before, and was going to “end it all,” news reports said, citing dispatch audio.

Police searched for hours with drones and dogs and found him dead at 1:31 a.m. from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police later said they had learned he had expressed “suicidal ideations.”

More answers came months afterward. In July, researchers at the Boston University CTE Center studied Kneeland’s brain tissue, diagnosed him with Stage 1 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and confirmed he had died by suicide. The Concussion & CTE Foundation announced the findings on Tuesday, July 7.

“Unfortunately, I was not surprised to find CTE in the brain of Mr. Kneeland, because we have found this progressive brain disease in nearly half of the athletes we’ve studied who have died before the age of 30,” Dr. Ann McKee, director of the Boston University CTE Center and chief of neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System, said in a press release.

The diagnosis gives a medical answer, but it does not make the loss any easier for those who knew him. As the anniversary arrived, the message from Prescott remembering Kneeland was a simple one.

“Life is delicate, and we should never take these moments that we have, no matter if it’s football or whatever we do in life, for granted,” Prescott concluded. “And be thankful, and make sure we’re always telling the people around us that we love them.”

Players across the Cowboys locker room spoke on Friday about Kneeland and the importance of checking in on each other.

Tyler Smith said, “People fight a lot of invisible battles, especially when you’re at the highest echelon of what you do.” CeeDee Lamb added, “Mental health, in general, is often blindly being ignored,” and “We do everything we can to honor him.” Marist Liufau also said, “We will never forget him, you know?”

A year later, the Cowboys are still finding ways to keep Kneeland’s memory close, and Huddle 94 is one of them.