Tag: terez paylor

Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes pens touching tribute to late NFL writer Terez Paylor

“We can’t let his legacy go dim.” – #Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes on late NFL journalist Terez Paylor

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Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes wrote a touching tribute about the late Terez Paylor in Monday’s Football Morning in America (FMIA) column.

Paylor died suddenly just days after Super Bowl LV last February. He was just 37 years old. Prior to working as a national NFL writer at Yahoo Sports, Paylor worked the Chiefs’ beat for the Kansas City Star.

Paylor covered Mahomes during his first two seasons in Kansas City, his rookie season and his MVP-winning season, which was also his first as a starter. Paylor’s genuine nature, journalistic integrity and passion for the game left an impression on Mahomes, just as it did on many of us. Because of that, Mahomes kicked off Monday’s guest column for FMIA, reminding us that we must help Paylor’s legacy live on.

“I miss Terez Paylor. It’s crazy, and sad, to think he’s been gone for five months now.

In my first two years in Kansas City, he was the beat guy covering the Chiefs for the Kansas City Star. I thought Terez was what a big-time NFL writer should be. He asked insightful questions, not cliché questions. I always knew when he was going to interview me that he’d be prepared. He’d have done his homework. I think some of the best stories written about me came from him—he asked questions that made me think, and so I’d give him good answers back. That’s a big part of why I really enjoyed my interactions with him.

I trusted him. He never tried to play gotcha with me, never tried to catch me in something so he could make a headline out of it. What I always appreciated was that he asked me questions to really try to let the fans know the inside story of why a play worked, or why we won or lost. That trust led me, when I started my foundation in 2019, to think of Terez. He had left to go to Yahoo Sports by that time, but when I started my foundation, 15 and the Mahomies Foundation, I called him first. I wanted him to tell the story because I knew he’d tell it right.

One of the reasons I’m writing this today is that I feel we can’t let his legacy go dim. He deserves to be remembered, and to impact future journalists, for years to come.

Terez was just 37 years old. He had decades left to be a beacon for so many young journalists—particularly minority journalists. Terez didn’t get to be a national writer and forget where he came from. He knew as he rose in the business that he was a role model for minority journalists. He definitely knew who he was talking to, who he was writing for. It was for the football audience, yes, but it was also for a generation of journalists he was influencing and hoped would follow his path.

He knew he didn’t see many people from his race, people who looked like him, climbing the ladder in sports journalism. He wanted that to change, and I respected the heck out of him for that.

I hope through his scholarship fund at Howard University that young journalists study journalism well, and also study Terez’s path. I hope for years there is a stream of Terez Paylor Scholars entering the business and rising to the heights he did. Knowing Terez, and knowing where he came from, that would be a proud piece of his legacy.”

In addition to Mahomes’ tribute, NFL Network’s Steve Wyche, Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson, ESPN’s Cameron Wolfe and The Philadelphia Enquirer’s Josh Tolentino all wrote a little something about Paylor.

The column also revealed that Paylor will be honored during the Chiefs’ preseason game against the Minnesota Vikings on August 27 at Arrowhead Stadium.

If you’d like to help keep Terez Paylor’s legacy alive, you can make a donation to the Terez A. Paylor Scholarship at his alma mater, Howard University. You can contribute online or by check:

For online go to https://giving.howard.edu/givenow. Under “Tribute,” be sure to that your gift is made in memory of Terez A. Paylor. Under “Designation,” click on “Other” and write “Terez A. Paylor Scholarship.”

For check, write “Terez A. Paylor Scholarship” on the check and mail it to:

Howard University
P.O. Box 417853
Boston, MA 02241-7853

How the late Terez Paylor helped Terrell Owens get into the Hall of Fame

Yahoo Sports’ Terez Paylor, who passed away last week, made his voice heard and helped Terrell Owens into the Hall of Fame.

When Yahoo Sports Senior NFL Reporter Terez Paylor passed away at the age of 37 last week, the kind thoughts and tributes from his fellow writers came thick and fast, and that should come as no surprise. I didn’t know Paylor well, but we’d talked a few times, and I always had a great deal of respect for his professional acumen, his ability to break a story, and how he was able to frame his stories with intelligent and personal narratives.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that we lost a giant in the industry.

Paylor, a Black man who understood and embodied his responsibilities in that regard, was also a member of the Hall of Fame selection committee, and as Newsday’s Bob Glauber recently wrote, Paylor really went to bat for the candidacy of Terrell Owens, the ridiculously talented and highly mercurial receiver whose induction was delayed in the first two years of his eligibility. Owens finished his career with 1,078 receptions (eighth all-time), 15,934 yards (third all-time), 153 touchdowns (third all-time), and 14.5 yards per touch (12th all-time). Numbers that should have made Owens a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but it’s not hard to imagine the number of reporters Owens irritated along the way. It’s not a fair part of the process, but these things happen.

Paylor wasn’t having it. At the Selection Committee meeting the night before Super Bowl LII on February 3, 2018, Paylor made an impassioned speech to the other members about what Owens meant to him, and how Owens was seen by a younger generation of football fans who didn’t expect or demand that their heroes be entirely uncomplicated, or lily-white in their behaviors.

Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area, who had presented Owens’ case for induction the two previous years, put it this way to Glauber: “To hear a young Black man talk about what drew him to the sport that he loved and what made an impression on him as a young man growing up was a perspective that I had personally never considered when it comes to that [Hall of Fame meeting] room.

“There’s the old saying that you know what a Hall of Famer is when you see him. Terez basically said that, growing up, that’s what a Hall of Famer in his community, among his friends and the people who shared the same experiences, looked like. Boom, that right there, that’s a Hall of Famer. I think that opened people’s eyes to a new perspective and a way of defining what a Hall of Famer is.”

Paylor tilted the room, and made the difference. Owens never knew how it happened in the room until Glauber reached out to him to tell him the story.

“I get glassy-eyed just thinking about it,” Owens said. “My condolences to his family. It’s so sad. I didn’t hear anything about Terez and his perspective and how they were deliberating on me. It’s so unfortunate that I’m learning of this after this man’s passing. Honestly, I wish I could have spoken to him to say thank you for what he did.

“What he did is what I did. You’re being courageous. You’re standing up, sometimes against giants. For him to be that young in a room of elders and people that have been on that committee for some time, that speaks volumes.

“For [Paylor] to have the courage to stand on the table . . . he didn’t know me personally, but I think him being a Black man and being a young guy and understanding where this generation is now, using our voice, is meaningful. I just wish I could have thanked him.”

It takes a lot to stand up for yourself and your own perspectives and experiences in a room filled with the true giants of football journalism, and bring your voice to the room that fearlessly. But that’s who Terez Paylor was, that’s what made him great, and that’s why he’ll always be remembered so very fondly.