Marshawn Kneeland always wore his emotions on his sleeve before his sudden death, according to one of the late NFL star’s teammates.
Kneeland died of an apparent suicide on November 6 following a brief police chase. He was 24 years old.
During a meeting with reporters on Thursday, November 14, Cowboys defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa was asked whether he ever knew Kneeland was struggling.
“I’ve seen him get upset before,” Odighizuwa, 27, said. “That’s why I know [that] Marshawn was a sensitive guy. That’s why I’m like, I know everything was 110 percent with him, even his emotions. When he got upset, he would be very upset. That was kind of the most that I knew.”
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Odighizuwa was part of a small group of Cowboys players who were chosen to speak at the team’s facilities on Thursday.
Defensive tackle Solomon Thomas, whose sister Ella died by suicide in 2018, spoke about Kneeland and the importance of mental health resources for 12 minutes.
“Marshawn was in the building, smiling every day,” Thomas, 30, said. “He was happy, he was listening to music, he was dancing all the time. But that’s the thing with mental health and suicide. You just never know what someone’s going through. Someone could be smiling, someone could be dancing, laughing, having a great time, expressing all this joy, but inside, they could really be fighting the battle that you never know about.”
He added, “You don’t know what the chemicals are telling them in their brain. You don’t know the trauma from their childhood. You don’t know everything they’ve been going through, and that’s why it’s so important to be kind. It’s so important to ask people how they’re doing. It’s so important to tell people the resources around them and that therapy is OK as a man, therapy is OK as a woman. These are things that we are that we need to go through because you never know what battle someone’s going through.”
Thomas urged that “our whole nation” needs to start taking mental health more seriously, advocating for getting off social media and “believing everything is just highlights.”
“That’s not life,” he said. “Life is about adversity — the hard times, the sad times, the depression, the sadness, the anxiety. These are all feelings of human experience. We just have to let people feel human and be human.”
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Thomas added, “That’s what we have to do, because it’s such a preventable death, and we’re losing so many amazing people to it. People that should be here, hugging their loved ones, spending birthdays with their loved ones, watching people get married, engaged. It’s such a preventable death, and we just need, as a nation, to come together. Be kind. Put more funding into mental health resources. Help people get to therapy. Let people know it’s OK to cry. Let people know it’s OK to not always put a smile on and be good. Let people know you can be sad and happy and still have a good day.”
The Cowboys return to action for the first time since Kneeland’s death on Monday, November 17, when they travel to Las Vegas to play the Raiders on Monday Night Football.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
