Let's Talk About This
- Gabe Moore
- Nov 17
- 5 min read
When you think of the people playing in the National Football League, you probably have a certain image inside your head. If you’ve really watched an NFL game at any point in your life, you can picture what an NFL football player looks like. For those of us who know the game well, you probably think of a handful of guys who are among the most elite, stars who transcend the gridiron and grab the eyes of far more Americans than solely the NFL audience can encompass-folks like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, and the Manning brothers fit into this category.
For those who follow the game more closely, maybe that’s an individual (or a couple of individuals) from your favorite team. If you’re a Bengals fan, you may think of Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase. If you like the Browns, you may think of Myles Garrett and DeShaun Watson.
Whether the thought of these players makes you happy or unhappy (and I would guess the latter for one name on that list) there’s one thing all of these players share in common.
That’s that many of them, to us at least, appear to be larger-than-life figures, superhuman entities that are above the rest of us, in status, in ability, and in everything else. They don’t even seem like real people a lot of the time. Between their athletic gifts and socioeconomic status and constant pedestalization at the hands of the media, NFL players have an air about them the most of us can’t fathom. We don’t see them as equal to us in any way. They’re bigger, better, faster, and most importantly, richer. They live in entirely different worlds than any of us, facing different challenges, accepting different opportunities, and receiving different treatment.
People like that have nothing in common with us. Right?
Wrong.
At the end of the day, most NFL players are just like the rest of us, and we received a tragic reminder of that this past week.
For those that may not be aware, Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland died in what authorities believe is a suicide on November 6, (1) a matter of days after he had scored his first career touchdown in the Cowboys loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football.
The news was shocking, as it rightly is anytime someone dies in this fashion. It’s equally puzzling to think of how someone in Marshawn Kneeland’s position can die in this way.
According to the reports released following his death, Marshawn Kneeland had spent his entire life working toward being where he was. A native of Michigan, Kneeland was a star high school football player who earned a scholarship to Western Michigan University (2) and was a second-round pick of the Cowboys in 2024.
Marshawn Kneeland was, based on the information at hand, living his dream. He worked his entire life with the intent of becoming a professional football player and achieved that goal. Not only that, but he was also becoming more and more successful with that goal. As previously mentioned, he’d scored his first career touchdown against Arizona only a couple of days before. Earlier this season, he had his first career sack against the Eagles.
From the outside looking in, it would seem that Marshawn Kneeland was on top of the world.
He, like so many before him, was someone who seemed to have everything anyone could ever want and yet still found themselves feeling empty inside.
Sadly, there are many who have felt this way over the years. Look at some of the many celebrities, who had tremendous wealth, tremendously large numbers of people who loved them, and tremendous skill at their chosen profession, beautiful families, large houses, no want for anything, and still could not be happy.
It’s unfathomable for most of us. How, we wonder, could that person, who has everything they ever dreamed of and more money than they could ever
spend and is liked by everyone still not be happy?
It is a question we have never answered. It never gets any easier to answer it or even think about it, either. The only thing we know is that it has to stop-not just for the rich and famous- but for all of us. As a matter of fact, according to some statistics, in the time it has taken me to write this, someone else has taken their own life.
We’ve been trying to figure out for a long time what to do about this. Mental health counseling and the like have been made available, and they have improved our situation, but it has not taken this problem away completely.
I don’t know what the answer to this problem is. All I can do is talk about is what I have experienced, and I can say that I am aware of people who have experienced these tendencies. And at least one of them would tell you that surviving these challenges are key to growing, in many different ways. Psalm 30:5 says that “[w]eeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” It’s the same sentiment as saying, “it’s always darkest before dawn,” and all the many variations of that phrase. And the thing is, it’s always true. Surviving trials gives us a sense of accomplishment, makes us feel better about almost everything. Rising above our circumstances is never easy but is always worth it.
It’s my genuine hope and prayer that we can get more people to realize that. That we can get to a place in our country, in our world, where that knowledge is much more common.
To get there, we’re going to have to make a lot of changes. We can start with all the constant back-and-forth rhetoric spewing from the mouths of every prominent politician in our country, railing about how if you don’t vote or think one particular way, you’re a terrible person. It’s unfathomable that this will be a controversial statement, but the fact is that there are really very few terrible people in this world, and no single one of us is perfect. Ergo, none of us should be out to get others for their imperfections. What’s the old saying about the log in the eye?
Join me this week in praying for us to make it to a better place in this world. A place where mental health is more prioritized and where we’re all better to each other and where stories like that of Marshawn Kneeland are a rarity rather than a recurring nightmare.
And while you’re at it, pray for Marshawn Kneeland’s family.
1 Bumbaca, Chris. “‘I Am Shattered.’ Dallas Cowboys Player Marshawn Kneeland Dies at 24.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 6 Nov. 2025,
2 DeArdo, Bryan. “Cowboys’ Marshawn Kneeland, 24, Dies by Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound after Chase.” CBS Sports, 6 Nov. 2025, www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/marshawn-kneeland-dies-cowboys
3 DeArdo, Bryan. “Cowboys’ Marshawn Kneeland, 24, Dies by Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound after
Chase.” CBS Sports, 6 Nov. 2025, www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/marshawn-kneeland-dies-cowboys
