The NFL family suffered a major loss on Thursday with the apparent suicide of Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland. He was only 24.
The situation highlights the importance of always keeping tabs on the people whose lives we touch on a regular basis. Everyone has an orbit of family, colleagues, friends, acquaintances. People we see at the store, the pharmacy, church. Whatever. Wherever.
We're in this life together. We need to look out for each other.
It's not easy. We have our own problems. Everyone is almost always going through something. Call your people. Text them. Check on them. Even if it's just to say hello.
Employers have an obligation, too. Their employees are at any given time under stress that can come from a wide variety of places. The more inherently stressful the job, the more important it is to make sure everyone is OK.
Being an NFL player is inherently stressful. The team is constantly evaluating whether the player is good enough, whether he can be replaced by someone younger, cheaper, more talented. One injury, happening in a flash, can derail an entire career.
As one source observed on Thursday, the Kneeland tragedy shows how critical it is for every team to have a full-time mental health clinician on staff.
"You’d be surprised how many don’t," the source said.
Beyond having someone who has been hired to keep tabs on the mental health of all players, coaches, and other personnel, our shared obligation to look out for each other applies. Patriots coach Mike Vrabel addressed this subject in a Friday press conference.
"That's something that I think we have always been intentional with, is trying to find and put as many points of contact around our players, our coaches, and our employees that we possibly can, that they feel comfortable sharing things and communicating," Vrabel said.
"I think that that's what you would do when you have a family and you spend a lot of time with each other. You kind of know what people — what they're like on a normal basis, on a daily basis, what their mannerisms are. They're next to each other in the locker room, and so I think that that just happens and occurs naturally. I'm always reminded of — and I think it might have been [Nelson] Agholor, but I don't want to misquote it — but it was a Patriot player, somebody had a concussion, he noticed that he wasn't right on the field, grabbed him and stopped and said, 'Hey.'"
Here’s the video. Patriots receiver Davante Parker hit his head on the turf in Arizona during a game in December 2022. Parker was obviously not right. He wasn't removed from the game. Before the next snap, Agholor was adamant that Parker needed to be checked.
"I showed that to the team in Tennessee, like, 'Hey, this is a teammate. We're going to miss things, but when you see something that's not right or when a guy's not right,'" Vrabel said. "And I know that's completely separate, but I'm just using that — that's always stood out to my mind of a guy saying, 'Hey, this guy doesn't seem right.' So we always want to do that, and we always want to look out for each other and have each other's backs."
Amen to all of that. It's something we should all take to heart.
Hey, this guy doesn't seem right.
The only way to know that is to check on people. To see how they're doing. And to be ready to help them when help is needed.
As Clarence said to George Bailey in a holiday classic that soon will emerge from its annual hibernation, "Every man's life touches so many other lives."
We can make a gigantic difference for those whose lives we touch, even if it doesn't feel very significant at the time.
All we have to do is pay attention.