MIAMI – Whether it’s the Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, World Series, NBA championship … to suffer defeat in the last game of the season must be absolutely crushing.
At the same time, it’s also just a pinprick in the big picture. A far greater pain, of course, is the loss of life. Especially when the end arrives tragically and suddenly, well before it should.
Like the crippling pain being felt by the families and friends of superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and the other seven people who horrifically died in a helicopter crash Sunday.
Mourning along with them, and a good many others around the world, were the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. At the same time, both of the Super Bowl teams have suffered similarly devastating, personal losses of their own in recent years.
The past 26 months have been particularly difficult for the 49ers.
You may remember seeing receiver Marquise Goodwin – in a November 12, 2107, 31-21 win over the New York Giants – score an 83-yard touchdown then blow a kiss to the sky, fall to his knees and bury his face in his hands. Only those with the team knew at the time that, just before the game, Goodwin’s wife lost their baby during pre-term labour, and he was only playing because she talked him into it.
You may have heard that, only weeks later, defensive tackle Solomon Thomas lost his 24-year old sister, with whom he was very close, to suicide. And that just this past December, the 22-year old kid brother of backup quarterback C.J. Beathard was stabbed to death outside of a bar in Nashville.
And that near the end of last season, the day before the 49ers picked up the third of only four wins they could muster in 2018, the younger brother of team owner Jed York was found dead, from another suicide.
After that an emotional York reportedly declared the 49ers would become champions, and that he would have a ring made for his deceased sibling.
Now they are four quarters of good football from making it happen.
The Chiefs have cried plenty of tears for their own football family.
You could go back as far as 1983 when Joe Delaney, a talented 24-year old running back who never learned how to swim, lost his life trying to save drowning children he did not know.
At the end of the 1999 season, linebacker Derrick Thomas, a former first round pick and nine-time Pro Bowler who, at the age of 33 still had some good football left in him, was involved in a car accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. A few days later he developed a blood clot that travelled to his lungs and killed him.
Then there was 25-year old linebacker Jovan Belcher, who during the 2012 season murdered his 22-year old girlfriend and then drove to the parking lot of the Chiefs practice facility, a few hundred yards from Arrowhead Stadium. There, after thanking general manager Scott Pioli and coach Romeo Crennel, Belcher put a bullet in his own brain right in front of them.
“The entire Chiefs family is deeply saddened by today’s events, and our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy, thoughts and prayers for the families and friends affected by this unthinkable tragedy,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said at the time.
Similar sentiments were passed along only a few months earlier to Andy Reid, who was then the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. His oldest son Garrett, who was assisting strength and condition coaches, was found dead in his room at the team’s Lehigh University training camp facility.
Garrett, who was 29 at the time, had struggled with drug abuse for years. It was later reported that he had accidentally overdosed.
Only a couple of days later, Andy Reid addressed the media.
“I’m a humble man standing before you … very humble man,” said Reid, now the Chiefs universally popular sideline boss. “I’m humble because of the outpouring. Not only from the media, but from our football team, from the fans … it was unbelievable.
“I’m not sure you ever think that many people care, not that you go in that direction, but it’s a very humbling feeling. I know my son would feel the same way.”
Watching the YouTube video again almost eight years later, it’s still remarkable that Reid was able to show such courage and strength, so soon. There can be nothing harder to do in this world than burying your own child.
“Listen, it’s a sad situation,” Reid said back then. “It’s one that my son’s been battling for a number of years. Our family’s been battling. That doesn’t mean you stop loving your son. That’s not what you do. So you love him, and a lot of families deal with this type of thing. It’s just a sad situation.
“On the other part of that, I praise my Heavenly Father for the support and the strength that he has given me to be able to work through this. My family, and my football family. That includes everybody in the National Football League.
“I know that coming back and coaching is the right thing to do. I know my son wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. So with that, again, I move on.”
Feel good for the franchise that wins Sunday, for it is owed some joy after all the pain its been through. For the other guys, well, it will only seem like the end of the world a short time. They’ve been crushed before. Much worse, in fact.
They’ll get over it.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
