Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones broke his silence on the death of team member Marshawn Kneeland at age 24.
“I do want to say publicly how much I appreciate the national news, the national recognition of him,” Jones, 83, said during a Tuesday, November 11, interview with local Dallas-Fort Worth radio station 105.3 The Fan. “I thought it was so fitting that on the [NFL] game Sunday night, all through Sunday, that they recognized the loss of Marshawn.”
Jones noted that the athlete’s death left him “devastated” and said it was “hard to believe” what he was being told when the call came with the news of Kneeland’s death.
“We all are having to share the sorrow, all are having to share the different ways or different things that come through your mind,” he continued. “It’s not light that as a teammate, Marshawn touched everybody in many different ways. The very definition of team is we love each other, we rely on each other. That’s the ethos of what a team is about.”
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Jones added, “Everybody expects that this is a rough game, it takes some real mental toughness to play the game, but in fact there’s a lot of love for each other there that is shared in unique ways, and you get to know each other pretty good.”
News of Kneeland’s death broke on Thursday, November 6. It has since been reported that in the late hours of the prior evening, Kneeland failed to stop for a traffic violation on November 5, leading to a brief car chase. The athlete crashed his car on the Dallas Parkway and was found dead shortly after 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, following an apparent suicide.
“Sports emphasizes so many things that we all want, to some degree, to hang our hat on,” Jones continued during his interview. “But this is a reality check that at the end of the day, the human things of having someone’s company on earth, being able to be involved with them for the time that we’re here, they’re here, all of those things come to mind in times like this.”
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The NFL team owner called out the late athlete’s “zest for life” when honoring Kneeland.
“He was very unique in his passion for the game. And of course the saddest thing for someone like me is the fact that he was only 24 years old,” Jones added. “You think about all of the time that we’re going to miss him, and he’s going to be missed by the people around him, he was just getting started.”
Jones further explained that the Cowboys plan to honor Kneeland with a special decal on their helmet for the rest of the season. It is currently being designed. When warming up for their upcoming game against the Las Vegas Raiders — set for Monday, November 17 — the players will wear commemorative T-shirts. That will mark the Cowboys’ first game since Kneeland’s death.
“I think we all have unfettered feelings about the people we love, people we work with. This is just a time when you acknowledge that there’s no answers,” Jones also said during his interview. “It makes you want to live life to the fullest, it makes you want to look for the very best in what we have for each other, and in some way make some sense out of these times.”
