I hope Dwayne Haskins knew how much he was loved. How happy just seeing his bright smile made people who got to see it. How Pittsburgh children were probably deeply impacted by a member of the beloved Steelers saying he had worries, too.
I hope he knew that he was so much more than his talents, than his career, than football.
Based on some stories that have come out since Haskins’ death on Saturday, it seems that last part was true. Haskins was human first and foremost, a kind young man who freely gave his time to charitable events, an introvert who made a name for himself playing the position where the spotlight is brightest, someone who insisted on embracing a reporter and praying for her when she was in tears over her grandmother’s recent death and trying to do it inconspicuously, away from the busy locker room.
He had spoken of his personal growth, the kind we all experience after we leave college, that time when we think we know everything and have it all figured out only to realize pretty quickly that we sure as hell do not. Haskins was going through that period in the public eye, with the weight and expectation of having been a first-round pick, our culture so obsessed with the draft and rankings — as if any of them are a predictor of anything — and somewhat blind to the fact that having the football career Haskins did is an extraordinary achievement in itself.
We can be incapable of seeing athletes as anything more than commodities or transactions, instead of kids who might be overwhelmed or scared or homesick. Or maybe all of the above, and too nervous to tell anyone they feel like they’re fumbling a bit, on the field, off the field, and it’s starting to snowball. And that if someone doesn’t step in to help, they might not get to play, might not get to start, might forget that just getting to the damn NFL is something so few can ever say they’ve done, and that there are people that love them for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with football.
I hope Dwayne Haskins knew how much he was loved.
I hope that for the small comfort his family and friends may be getting from lovely statements and tweets that have come out after his death, that Haskins himself, in life, heard coaches and teammates say what a great person he was. How much affection they had for him. How they valued his friendship. How they admired his work ethic.
That they didn’t assume they had plenty of time to tell him in the future, and that they had told him some random Tuesday, gotten past whatever awkwardness they may have felt, and just let him know.
Others have forgotten all that, with horrifying results. In the race to be first to break news by a couple of seconds, in pursuit of feeding the content beast, in keeping with the way players have long been viewed as something other than human beings, these people distilled everything about Dwayne Haskins in the moments following his death down to their belief that he was a disappointment at professional football, that because he didn’t do things the way they would, he should be characterized in revolting fashion.
If you saw Haskins and the other men of the NFL as humans first, you wouldn’t have to apologize for painting them as anything less.
It is tragic that too much of the discussion has been on callous tweets and appalling alleged “analysis” instead of the young man — the son, the husband, the brother, the teammate, the friend — who was working to be the best version of himself, that radiant smile at the ready.
Maybe Haskins would have been a starting quarterback again some day, maybe he wouldn’t have. It really shouldn’t matter. The kids at Fulton Elementary just a few minutes from the Steelers’ training facility last month didn’t care that Haskins wasn’t the team’s star quarterback. He was a Steeler, period. And he took time to read to them, and answer their questions, and returned the hug of the one that threw their arms around him.
A family, a team, multiple communities — they all lost a man who by many accounts was kind, considerate and working to pursue his dream.
I hope Dwayne Haskins knew how much he was loved.
