Micah Parsons on the death of his former teammate Marshawn Kneeland
Green Bay Packers DE Micah Parsons is dealing with the emotions of losing a former teammate from Dallas, Marshawn Kneeland.
Micah Parsons expressed shock and sadness over the death of his former teammate, Marshawn Kneeland.Parsons highlighted the challenges NFL players face in addressing mental health within the league’s culture.The Packers edge rusher noted the pressure on athletes to perform regardless of personal struggles.
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GREEN BAY – The text came through early in the morning. Hours before the rest of the NFL would join him in shock. Micah Parsons was at first confused. He didn’t want to believe it.
A former Dallas Cowboys teammate doubled down, confirming Marshawn Kneeland had in fact died Nov. 6.
“He approached me with the news,” Parsons said, “and I said, ‘No way. What happened?’ He was like, ‘We don’t know.’ He told me about 15 minutes later about what happened.”
Kneeland died by suicide after a police chase that ended with his vehicle crashed alongside a Dallas-area highway. Parsons spent Kneeland’s rookie season and all of this offseason sharing a locker room with the 2024 second-round draft pick before his trade to the Green Bay Packers. Parsons remembered his former teammate as someone who loved anime and video games, but also showed him “nothing but respect” from Kneeland’s first day in the NFL.
Parsons said he shared a “high respect” for how Kneeland handled himself in the league.
“Obviously, I was extremely shocked,” Parsons said. “I was extremely hurt by the news. I don’t want to see anyone go this soon at this age, or I don’t want anyone to go, but that’s kind of the reality. I think the first key is accepting, and I kind of accept it. But I’ve just got to pray he finds his peace in what he was looking for, or how he felt in that moment. You really just don’t know.
“For me, I have kids. It’s like how do I make sure my kids don’t end up in a similar situation, or how do I be there for them as much as possible?”
Parsons took a moment during his weekly gaggle with local media to shine light on mental health awareness and the difficulty within the league of finding proper help. He said family members in his past have struggled with mental health, but it’s difficult in the hyper-masculine NFL culture to seek help.
There’s also pressure to perform on the field regardless of what is happening in life away from it.
“It’s not something we talk about in the locker room,” Parsons said. “This is hard conversations. This is something we should talk to a professional, seek professional help. We all know, and we’d be fools to act like what we do isn’t enough pressure as it is. We live in a pressured job where you’re expected to deliver. You’re expected to play a certain way, and when you don’t it’s easy to say, ‘Oh man, it’s so sad.’ But a lot of people are hard on people, ‘You suck. You stink. We hope you die.’ I mean, there’s a lot of harsh words and harsh things that get said about people. As athletes, most of us see it. Some of us don’t. But we choose to wait until somebody passes to realize what we say or what we do, how it can affect people.
“Now we don’t understand what happened to 94 (Kneeland), but mental health is important about being there for each other, whether we’re going through hard times or whatever it may be. But it’s tough. It’s a hard job, but it’s harder to be a person sometimes. I think sometimes people evade that you are human. They try to go away from that, and sometimes you wish things were different.”
Parsons said it’ll be “challenging” to balance his emotions this week preparing to play the Philadelphia Eagles, but he drew strength from knowing Kneeland would want nothing more than for him to beat the Cowboys’ rival. It’s the same fire and intensity Parsons said his former teammate brought to the field.
But it won’t be an easy game night for the Packers edge rusher.
“The personal side in this career, how people look at it,” Parsons said, “it’s always got to be second. This is a football first, everything else later job. The fans expect you to be ready. Your coaches expect you to be ready. Even your teammates expect you to be ready. But in reality to say we’re emotionless and we don’t have feelings and you’ve got to put things to the side all the time, it’s just not realistic. So I have to find a way to embrace my emotions and embrace everything I’m feeling for his family, my former teammates. I’ve got former teammates that are devastated. They can’t comprehend it.
“Losing a teammate is like a brother. People don’t realize how much we’re actually together, time spent. That’s the challenge. We’re putting away a brother. Regardless, this NFL is a brotherhood. So it doesn’t matter who it is, if you’re breaking a sweat, breaking blood with someone on the opposite team or the same team, it’s a brotherhood. Trying to put that aside is challenging, but we’ve got to find a way because there’s an expectation that comes Monday night.”