WYOMING, Mich. — A cadre of Dallas Cowboys players chased after the football as it tumbled into the end zone under the bright lights of “Monday Night Football.” In a flash, one player emerged in front of the pack — a 268-pound defensive end who smothered the ball for a touchdown.

To most Cowboys fans, it was 6 points scored on a blocked punt. But to many in western Michigan, it was the culmination of a lifetime of hard work for the funny but quiet, sports- and video-games-obsessed guy they knew, Marshawn Kneeland, who had spent 24 years outrunning circumstances, loss and doubt to make the NFL.

That touchdown on Nov. 3 was his first in the league, and the congratulatory texts flooded in, including from one of his college coaches. The next day, Kneeland was still buzzing from the touchdown, and he told the coach, Lou Esposito, that he planned to come back to Michigan that week. Kneeland said he had something to share. Esposito asked him what it was. “Good news,” he responded.

Two nights later, Kneeland was dead, following what the authorities in Texas said was a police chase, a crash and, then, a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Authorities Release Few Details About Police Chase

The case raised questions that have yet to be answered, in part because the authorities have released few details about what happened after officers tried to pull him over for a traffic violation. Why did Kneeland try to flee, and why did he have a gun in the car?

Police dispatch audio captured the Cowboys’ security director telling law enforcement that Kneeland had sent concerning texts, appearing to say goodbye and saying that he could not go to prison.

It was an abrupt and devastating end for a man who seemed to have achieved his dreams — a multimillion-dollar contract, a tight inner circle of friends and a girlfriend who had recently become pregnant with their child.

“He was so excited about growth,” said Brandon Kimble, his high school coach, who remembers praying about the future with Kneeland and his girlfriend, Catalina Mancera, in their kitchen north of Dallas just a month ago. “It’s just so hard, and it makes it even harder,” he said.

Kneeland Had a Singular Dream: Play in the NFL

The football field at Godwin Heights High School sits in Wyoming, Michigan, just outside Grand Rapids, and is encircled by a running track. The field and track are bordered on one side by a creek and railroad tracks, and on the other by a quiet residential street. After school let out one night last week, the field was empty except for a teenager kicking a soccer ball.

Kneeland spent much of his childhood in a house close enough that he could walk to school. His older sister, Yahmya, remembers spending long days outside, playing tag and laughing. Back then, she said, her brother liked to draw and dance to whatever music was on, but he always had a singular focus on athletics. Teachers told him he needed a backup plan to his dreams of playing in the NFL, but he had only the one goal.

Kneeland was raised at times by his mother and father and at times by his father’s parents. His mother, Wendy, worked in human resources for UPS, and his father, Shawn, mostly held odd jobs. His father had been a high school basketball star in Grand Rapids but was jailed several times during Kneeland’s childhood and was recently sentenced to prison on drug and gun charges.

Yahmya Kneeland said that she could see her mother’s drive, focus and work ethic in her brother. Neither ever made excuses. Part of his drive also came from wanting to take care of them, she said. Despite being the younger brother, Marshawn Kneeland had a tattoo on his left arm that read: “My sister’s protector.” She matched it with one on her forearm: “My brother’s keeper.”

Godwin Heights has long been known as a basketball school, and when Kneeland arrived, no football player had ever received a scholarship offer from a Division I college, Kimble said.

Kimble, who is now the school’s athletic director, took over as football coach when Kneeland was a senior, in the fall of 2018. He had so much talent that he played on both sides of the ball — as a lineman on defense and as a tight end on offense.

At that time, Esposito — now the defensive line coach at the University of Michigan — was the defensive coordinator at Western Michigan University. He was keeping an eye on Kneeland and remembers going to see him play a basketball game that winter and watching him fly up and down the court.

It was a done deal — Kneeland was going to be playing Division I football.

Showed His Work Ethic at Western Michigan

Those who knew Kneeland said he was never the loudest in a room — perhaps he was even on the quiet side — but would burst out of his shell to crack a joke or when the topic turned to his interests: video games and anime TV shows.

Sometimes, it was surprising how much he kept to himself. Early on in college, he had surgery scheduled for Christmas Eve to fix an injured shoulder and was planning to simply return to his dorm room afterward. Esposito found out about it and picked Kneeland up from the hospital; they spent Christmas at Esposito’s home, with Kneeland playing video games and hanging out with the coach’s four children.

Over his five years at Western Michigan, people were struck with his work ethic, whether he was studying film or working out in the gym. Sometimes, he needed to be told to take a break from the weights.

“He went so hard all the time,” Esposito said.

But Kneeland also had a soft side. In his second year on the team, he noticed that Esposito was visibly upset about having recently lost his father. “No one can take the memories away,” Kneeland told him.

Kneeland’s Mom Dies Before the NFL Combine

Esposito remembered that advice when, in February 2024, Kneeland’s mother died from an accidental overdose. Kneeland was in Florida, preparing for the NFL combine, an event where college players show off their skills in front of professional scouts before the draft.

Esposito drove down and found him distraught. “I said to him, ‘You remember what you told me, right?’” The combine can be a make-or-break experience, but Kneeland was close to skipping it altogether. Jon Perzley, his agent, said he had tried to assure Kneeland that teams would understand if he needed to be elsewhere. “Nobody will give you any kind of problems,” he remembers saying.

Kneeland thought about it and came to a conclusion: His mother would want him out on the field. In fact, she would be disappointed if he weren’t.

“He always told her he was going to the NFL, he was going to take care of her. That was his goal,” Kimble said. “He wanted to go make her proud.”

A few days later, in March 2024, Kneeland returned home for his mother’s memorial service. He told those at the church that his mother had always been there, supporting him on cold nights at the football field and from afar.

When she died so unexpectedly, he said, “it tore me apart.”

“One thing that helped me get through it is that I could still feel her,” he said. The next month, in April 2024, Kneeland sat surrounded by his family and friends in Michigan, as the Dallas Cowboys called his name in the second round of the draft. His sister reached out on a video call from South Korea, where she was stationed in the Army.

Kneeland fell in love with the Dallas area. If he could, he wanted to play with the Cowboys for his entire career, friends said. And he was becoming more of an adult, Kimble said, talking with Mancera about their future: marriage, children, buying a home. His sister, still in the Army, had recently moved to San Antonio.

On the first game of the NFL season, Kneeland recorded his first career sack. Then, two months later, his first touchdown.

A Family Grieves

The police have given only a basic description of the night he died, saying that he sped off when Texas state troopers tried to stop his car for a traffic violation. He managed to get away briefly but crashed his car next to a highway north of Dallas. When the police searched near the crash, they found him dead.

The Cowboys were heading into a week off at the time. A teammate posted a photograph later in the week of flowers beneath Kneeland’s locker. On Monday night, the Cowboys will play their first game since his death.

His friends and family said they did not want to speak about his death or what might have been running through his mind. Not only is it too soon and too painful, they said, but he also should be remembered as much more than the football player who killed himself.

Instead, they have tried to console one another.

Yahmya Kneeland has spent time recently with Mancera, grieving their loss, and said she had been thinking about how people live on through one another.

After his mother’s death, Marshawn Kneeland wore a small capsule containing some of her ashes on a chain around his neck. Yahmya Kneeland’s 5-year-old daughter had always called him “Uncle Buddy,” his mother’s nickname for him. Now, Yahmya Kneeland says, her brother will live on through his child with Mancera.

Esposito says he has been haunted by Marshawn Kneeland’s comment that he had something to share with him. Was the “good news” that he expected to soon be a father? Was it something else? All of it, Esposito said, is “brutal.”

(Bernard Mokam and Edgar Sandoval contributed reporting, and Georgia Gee contributed research for this article.)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

c.2025 The New York Times Company