On November 26, 2007, Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was shot in his home by an intruder. The bullet severed Taylor’s femoral artery, and he died the following day. He was 24 years old.
While Taylor lay in critical condition, Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post had this to say in an online chat (via Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky).
McLean, Va.: Will your opinion of Taylor change if this does not turn out to be a random incident (e.g. home invasion)?
Michael Wilbon: No … people’s opinions are shaped by the way they’ve grown up, the way they see the world, what they know about the world the person in question grew up in, etc. Sean Taylor isn’t the only guy I know who fits his general profile. I’ve known guys like Taylor all my life, grew up with some. They still have shades of gray and shouldn’t be painted in black and white…I know how I feel about Taylor, and this latest news isn’t surprising in the least, not to me. Whether this incident is or isn’t random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain’t the first and won’t be the last. We have no idea what happened, or if what we know now will be revised later. It’s sad, yes, but hardly surprising.
Wilbon wrote this just after Taylor had died.
I wasn’t surprised in the least when I heard the news Monday morning that Sean Taylor had been shot in his home by an intruder. Angry? Yes. Surprised? Not even a little. It was only in June 2006 that Taylor, originally charged with a felony, pleaded no contest to assault and battery charges after brandishing a gun during a battle over who took his all-terrain vehicles in Florida. After that, an angry crew pulled up on Taylor and his boys and pumped at least 15 bullets into his sport-utility vehicle. So why would anybody be surprised? Had it been Shawn Springs, I would have been stunned. But not Sean Taylor…
…Coincidence? We have no idea, not yet anyway. Could have been a random act, a break-in, something that happens every day in America, something that could happen to any one of us no matter how safe we think our neighborhood is. Could have been just that. But would it surprise me if it was more than that, if there was a distinct reason Taylor was sleeping with a machete under his bed? A machete. Even though his attorney and friend Richard Sharpstein says his instincts tell him “this was not a murder or a hit,” would it stun me if Taylor was specifically targeted? Not one bit.
ESPN Radio personality Colin Cowherd had this to say about it on November 27.
Sean Taylor, great player. has a history of really really bad judgment, really really bad judgment. Cops, assault, spitting, DUI. I’m supposed to believe his judgment got significantly better in two years, from horrible to fantastic? “But Colin, he cleaned up his act.” Well yeah, just because you clean the rug doesn’t mean you got everything out. Sometimes you’ve got stains, stuff so deep it never ever leaves.
My gut feeling with this story, and we said yesterday, yesterday was not really a day to go out, yesterday was sort of a day, you know, grieving, but we’re past the memorial part. It’s grown-up time, ask yourself realistic questions….Just because somebody cleans the rugs doesn’t mean there aren’t stains. No matter what those commercials, OxiClean, tell you on cable TV, some stains you can’t get out. And if you have bad judgment for 23 years of your life, even if you clean it up, your judgment doesn’t get great over night.
Cowherd, two days later.
No, all the information’s not in [on whether Taylor’s murder was random]. But I feel pretty confident that my gut feeling, like any of yours, by the way, is right and was right.
As it turned out, Taylor’s death was the result of a random break-in, in which the criminals responsible found Taylor asleep in his bed.
Wilbon and Cowherd should have waited for the facts before throwing their prefab narratives out there, but they didn’t, and they had no issue with doing it that way. Neither of their careers were affected. When NFL Films produced the Football Life episode about Taylor, producer Erik Powers reached out to 28 people to be interviewed. FIlms wound up talking 41 people, because so many people wanted to share their memories.
Wilbon and Cowherd were the only two people who declined to be interviewed. Apparently, their boldness had run dry.
Why? Why was this perceived as an acceptable thing to do at all? Taylor being young, successful, and Black with a complicated past gave Wilbon and Cowherd free rein as it generally does with your less enlightened pundits, but there’s also the unfortunate and more general truth that when it comes to professional athletes, we who cover them so often fail to understand and remember that they’re human beings — with the same kinds of greatness, foibles, and complications we all have.
When then-Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs was asked about Taylor’s death, he said the only thing that should have been said.
“We’re going to miss him. I’m not talking about as a player. I’m talking about as a person.”
This struck me especially hard on Saturday morning, when I read the news that Dwayne Haskins, another college superstar who plied his trade in the nation’s capital for a time, died when he was hit by a vehicle. Like Taylor, Haskins was 24 years old.
And like Taylor, Haskins and his family were subject to media “eulogies” nobody should have to endure.
There was this eventually-deleted tweet from ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who broke the story:
And there was whatever this was from NFL scouting legend Gil Brandt, which we can put right up there with the worst from Wilbon and Cowherd.
Here is @Gil_Brandt on NFL radio when asked about Dwayne Haskins.
“He was a guy that was living to be dead.”
“It was always something” with Haskins
“Maybe it he stayed in school a year he wouldn’t do silly things [like] jogging on a highway.” pic.twitter.com/cuZZdqYOck— Pete Damilatis (@PeteDamilatis) April 9, 2022
“I hate it anytime anybody is killed or anybody dies, but he was a guy who was living to be dead, so to speak,” Brandt told SIRIUSXM NFL Radio hosts Vic Carruci and Dan Leberfeld when asked about Haskins. “They told him, don’t under any circumstances, leave school early. You don’t have the work habits, you don’t have this, you don’t have that. What did he do? He left school early. I’ll always remember this — we invited players to the draft. And he was one of the players we invited to the draft. We were told, ‘No, we’re going to have our own party.’ How own party was a party at a bowling alley, charging 50 bucks to get into the bowling alley for his party.
“It was always something, you know? it was one of those things. I’m never offside, but they keep calling me for offside. It is what it is. It’s a tragic thing — anytime anybody dies, it’s tragic — and especially when you’re 24 years old, and you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.
“But maybe if he’s stayed in school a year, he wouldn’t do silly things. When you’re jogging on a highway, on a road like that, that leaves it… if a guy has two drinks, he’s a little bit to the right side of the road, and he gets hit and killed, it’s easy to happen.”
We’ll just leave that where it is, except to say that Brandt’s words echo the callous disregard for the real story that Wilbon’s and Cowherd’s words had all those years ago regarding Taylor.
And except to say that “But maybe if he’d stayed in school a year, he wouldn’t do silly things.” is about as bad a look as you can create for yourself in a situation like this. You have to be a little bit to the right side of the road, as Brandt would say, to even think about going there in the first place. You have to be easily and carelessly willing to take what you think you know about an athlete and fold it into what you think you know about he died before the truth comes out.
As for Schefter? It’s likely that he got caught up in an all-to-easy trap, where we as reporters and analysts see the athletes we cover as widgets. Either he figured it out, or somebody at ESPN helped him to figure it out, and he rode the deleted tweet trail.
It is just as likely as it was for Wilbon and Cowherd that neither Schefter nor Brandt will suffer any professional consequences for their actions.
In case anybody was interested, here’s what actually happened on the morning of April 9, 2022:
Per a release from the Florida Highway Patrol:
Dwayne Haskins was walking and attempting to cross the westbound lanes of I-595 when he was struck and killed by an oncoming vehicle early today. The accident was reported around 6:37 a.m. He was pronounced dead on scene.
— Ben Standig (@BenStandig) April 9, 2022
So, 14 years, four months, and 13 days between the deaths of Sean Taylor and Dwayne Haskins, we have two young men who died at age 24 in Florida, played for the NFL’s franchise in the nation’s capital, and were attacked after their passing by prominent people in this business who had no business saying what they said. The circumstances of their deaths were profoundly different, which makes the post-mortems in the media that much more offensive. Not only do we mix the death of any young Black man into “Well, maybe he had it coming;” we don’t seem to understand that a person’s past may not have any bearing whatsoever on their future, no matter how short that future may be.
Jason Wright, the current President of the Washington Commanders, put it about as well as it can be put.
Bc there is a pervasive, trite & false narrative about athletes, especially NFL and NBA 👀, that great athleticism cannot come w/ great intellect & character. It subjugates men, pushing the idea that they are worth nothing apart from the arena. It has deep roots & it’s harmful.
— Jason Wright (@whoisjwright) April 9, 2022
I’d like to think I’m better than this. But I’ve spent the last month writing as many scouting reports of 2022 draft prospects as possible, and since I intentionally don’t get into personal stuff like player effort or player mindset because I can’t tell those things on tape, it could be said that my scouting reports of human beings are no different than if I was writing about dishwashers or wireless headphones for a consumer website.
This headphone has 20% more bass response. This edge rusher has 20% more bend around the arc.
It’s not that different, except that the “things” I’m writing about are… yanno… people.
It’s too easy to depersonalize the players we cover. Sometimes, it’s the best and most objective way to do it. But on occasions like the deaths of Dwayne Haskins and Sean Taylor, perhaps it’s best to take a moment and wonder how you’d like the death of a 24-year-old man in your family covered in the public eye before you go spouting off about things you can’t possibly know.
In times like these, taking the personal approach is the only way.