FRISCO, Texas (AP) — Dak Prescott thought of Marshawn Kneeland several times in the star quarterback’s first practice with the Dallas Cowboys since their defensive lineman was found dead of an apparent suicide.
“I just countered that with running harder after a play or trying to do something to better this team to show that,” Prescott said Thursday. “It felt good. I know it was a great practice. A lot of guys were out there, good energy, beautiful weather.
“We’re not forgetting, but we’re moving forward, carrying on the light.”
Prescott and his teammates returned to the practice field exactly a week after getting the news that Kneeland, 24, had evaded officers who were trying to make a traffic stop and he was found dead several hours after fleeing the scene of an accident on foot.
Dallas (3-5-1) plays at Las Vegas (2-7) on Monday night.
A locker room that’s normally open to reporters for 45 minutes after most practices was off limits. Instead, several players were brought to the team’s indoor practice field, which also serves as a 12,000-seat high school stadium.
The first two were defensive lineman Solomon Thomas and Prescott. Both had siblings who died by suicide, and both tried to downplay that connection as they explained how they were trying to help their teammates grieve.
“A lot of triggering emotions for myself, not to make that more important than any of the pain that anyone else is feeling right now,” said Thomas, whose sister, Ella, was the same age as Kneeland when she died. “The only way I know how to get out of it, to move forward from a tragic situation like this, is to live for that person, take the amazing qualities that you learned from them, take the smiles and memories that gained from them, and apply them to your life every day.
“Live for that person. Talk to their spirit. Hold their spirit with you every day.”
Kneeland’s death came during the Cowboys’ open week. They weren’t together again as a group until Monday, then were part of a private candlelight vigil Tuesday night.
“I can tell you my hardest days were those few days before we got to come in and be together,” said Prescott, who lost his mother to cancer while at Mississippi State and whose older brother Jace died by suicide in 2020. “The ways that I’ve dealt with grief is just being in the presence of others who understand what that grief feels like. In this case, it was just your teammates. Those days were tough, but the moment we go in together, I know that team meeting was healing to me.”
The practice didn’t seem much different than those before Kneeland’s death, loud music pumping through large speakers as coach Brian Schottenheimer bounced from player to player while they stretched, greeting each one during the portion of the workout that is open to reporters. Schottenheimer does that for every practice.
“I’m a very authentic person and I am who I am and I’m not going to change for anybody, whether we win, we lose. In this situation, you lose a family member,” Schottenheimer said a day after meeting with reporters for the first time since Kneeland died. “Because I only know one way to do it, and if I’m not who I am, the players are going to read that.
“I’m always going to be me. And I’m never going to change,” the coach said. “I know talking to a number of the leaders, they’re like, ‘We’re done talking. We want to play.’ And that as a coach gets you excited.”
Who knows how the emotions will hit each player or coach in the moments before they play the Raiders, with the Cowboys at a point that they’ll have to win nearly all of their eight remaining games to have a chance to reach the playoffs. That reality is now mixed with the question of how important the games really are.
“Sports is so much more than a guy throwing a football around,” said Thomas, a ninth-year player in his first season with the Cowboys. “There’s so many beautiful stories in that locker room of guys overcoming grief, bringing grief with them to play this game, from all different backgrounds, differences in politics, differences in values.
“But we all come together for one goal and I think that’s going to be the main thing for this game. Bring those feelings for Marshawn with you and play for them.”
There’s still plenty of processing for the players before Monday night, and even beyond that.
“It’s still something that I’m trying to wrap my head around,” defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa said. “I was at my locker before practice and I looked up and I felt like I saw him, and ‘Ah, nah, that’s someone else.’ It hits you, you know what I mean? Just moments like that.
“It’s still sinking in, to be honest. It still doesn’t feel all the way real.”
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