Mark Sanchez opens up about deaths of former teammates
This is no quarterback drama, no buttfumble, no Eva Longoria paparazzi shot. This is just grief, a leaden, numbing grief that makes going to work, or eating a simple meal, both a challenge and a welcome respite.
On Monday afternoon, former Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez carried the coffin of one close friend and former teammate, then learned that night another lifelong football pal had passed away. Joe McKnight, 28, was shot dead on Dec. 1 at an intersection in New Orleans; Konrad Reuland, 29, succumbed two weeks after suffering a brain aneurysm.
“I’ve got to get up and go eat breakfast, I’m going to work out, I’m going to study film and go to practice and things move on,” Sanchez, a reserve quarterback for the Cowboys, said at Wednesday’s practice in Frisco, Texas, via ESPN. “The world moves on, and it’s like you don’t even have enough time to piece it together. It’s really weird. And you just know that family is grieving. You just pray for them and offer your support, but there’s nothing to make anybody feel better.”
Sanchez grew up with Reuland. They played basketball together as second-graders and football together at Mission Viejo (Calif.) High School, a star quarterback and tight end. They were reunited in the NFL as members of the Jets. Sanchez recalled visiting Reuland, who was unconscious in a California hospital bed, after his friend suffered the aneurysm Nov. 28, for what turned out to be a goodbye.
“His dad said I could go see him and he was still in the induced coma, so we were just kind of laying hands on praying for him and hoping he’d wake up,” Sanchez said. “Just too bad he didn’t. Just … too bad.
“It’s just such a tough situation because to that one family and the people that are close, it’s everything. You’ve lost everything when you lose something that is so important you do.”
McKnight became a dear friend of Sanchez’s in college, at USC, where the quarterback took on the role of local guide to his talented teammate — with whom he also reunited on the Jets.
“SoCal is my home and I lived only an hour away, so we’d go pick those guys up on a Saturday and go have a barbecue, go throw the ball, whatever, in the offseason,” Sanchez said, according to ESPN. “So those guys became my good friends. Yeah, that was a tough one. That hit home. It’s just tough to see because he’s got his little boy, Jaiden, and you never want to see
something like that.” Sanchez said he spoke by phone to McKnight recently, after the running back returned from a stint in the Canadian Football League.
“I just knew he thought it was so cold up there,” Sanchez said. “But he was the man. I mean such a good kid, an infectious smile. … Joe touched lot of people and without even trying. That’s just the kind of guy he was.”