Why Marshawn Kneeland's death resonated

Friends of the 24-year-old Cowboy wonder what they didn't see

Kneeland celebrates his touchdown

One problem with bad news, especially when it accumulates, is that it replaces the bad news that came before. The hurricane that drowns 20 people replaces the one that merely drowned 10. The school shooting that took 10 lives takes precedence over the one that took only five. That’s a media failing but it’s also a measurement of our numbness. If you were around on Sept. 11, 2001, it becomes difficult to absorb shock.

When Marshawn Kneeland of the Dallas Cowboys took his own life Wednesday night, his NFL and college football friends were knocked back. The rest of us? We awaited the rest of the story. Strong drink, a domestic dispute, CTE….the parameters had been set long before.

But when they flashed the life span on the screen — Marshawn Kneeland, 2001-2025 — it was different. The defensive end was born in this century, the one that wasn’t supposed to begin at all if you remember the millennium bug, the one that was twisted irreperably by what happened in its second year. Born in 2001? That was yesterday, right?

Law enforcement officers were ready to pull over Kneeland at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, suspecting a violation of some sort, but Kneeland bolted. The police chased. Kneeland’s car hit a pickup truck, and he drove into a wooded area, left the car, came back, fetched a weapon, and shot himself. Along the way he called his girlfriend, Catalina, and told her he was going to “end it all,” and friends on a group chat reported the same thing.

Kneeland was an NFL sophomore, from Western Michigan. On Monday night he jumped on a blocked punt and scored his first NFL touchdown, against Arizona. He had played seven of the nine games, got a sack in his first game, and had three tackles-for-loss. He and others were supposed to ease the loss of Micah Parsons, whom Dallas traded in August. That wasn’t going to happen, but, from the outside, Kneeland’s career was on a promising track.

Kneeland’s friends and mentors looked in the rear-view and struggled to identify what they should have seen. Greg Ellis is a former assistant coach and a 12-year NFL veteran. He also is a mental health advocate who wrote a film about it, called “My Dear.”

“For me, I should have known,” Ellis said. “But the moments when I paid attention to him when he would withdraw, he would get quiet. I’d say, ‘What’s going on?’ His No. 1 answer was, ‘I’m straight, coach.’ A lot of things are hindsight. I did see it. But I didn’t think it would lead to this.”

Parsons, who now plays in Green Bay, remembered Kneeland’s love of video games and anime but also recognized the warning signs for himself and all NFL players.

“It’s challenging because obviously the personal side, in this career, how people look at it, always gotta be second,” he said. “This is a football-first, everything-else-later job. To say we’re emotionless and we don’t have feelings, you gotta put things to the side all the time, that’s just not realistic. I have to find a way to embrace my emotions. I got former teammates that are devastated. They can’t comprehend it. Losing a teammate is like losing a brother.

“People tell us men can’t be soft. I think as men, we’re taught not to be as vulnerable. I think sometimes people forget that you are human.”

Mel Owens is now known as the Golden Bachelor, but for nine years he played linebacker for the Rams and then became a workmen’s comp attorney. On his office door in Orange County he had a quote from John Madden: “If you play only one game of football, your life will never be the same.”

Owens said that football does to your brain what picking at a scab does to a scab. “You injure your brain over and over again,” he said. “Any player will have trauma. You’re fine, until you step off the cliff and you’re not fine anymore.”

Whether this pertains to Kneeland, we won’t know until the autopsy, because CTE cannot be detected until its victim dies. But every victim of every storm has a distinctive story.

Kneeland grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich. and had one scholarship offer from a major college school, possibly because he played a lot of tight end. After a couple of years at Western Michigan, head coach Tim Lester got fired and Kneeland was all set to transfer to Colorado. The Pac-12, the mountains, Deion Sanders…what could be better?

Then Western Michigan hired Lou Esposito, Kneeland’s old position coach, as defensive coordinator. Kneeland canceled his plans and returned to Kalamazoo. Esposito called Kneeland Tuesday, after the touchdown.

Kneeland, at 6-foot-3 and 267, went to the Senior Bowl and was the fastest man at his position. He was preparing to make another splash at the NFL Combine when his mother Wendy died unexpectedly. Kneeland performed anyway and led all defensive linemen and linebackers in the shuttle drill and 3-cone drill, barometers of agility and not pure speed. That motivated Dallas to make him a second-round pick.

All along, and until he died, Kneeland wore a tube around his name that contained Wendy’s ashes.

The NFL is not as medieval as it once was. Players wear soft-shell helmets in practice. You sometimes even see them in games. A league official is in every press box, calling down to remove any player who seems woozy or disoriented. There is no player who is unaware of the dangers of the game or the resources the NFL has to navigate the mental pressures. Those resources do no good if the player doesn’t partake. But, unfortunately, depression and frontal lobe dementia leave no room for logic.

What’s important is that, even though people forget the humanity of the fallen player, Marshawn Kneeland’s friends and fellow soldiers have made sure that people recognize his. But there’s a warning, too. The vigils for our 21st-century children are just beginning.