It’s not even been a week since the tragic apparent suicide of Cowboys end Marshawn Kneeland, and still, the news is raw for most around the organization. It’s even more painful, of course, for those who were closest to Kneeland, especially his longtime girlfriend, Catalina Marcena, who has been his partner since Kneeland was a collegiate player at Western Michigan.
It was Marcena who alerted police back on November 5 that Kneeland was armed and could be a danger to himself, warning of his history of mental illness. In the days since, Marcena has remained out of the spotlight, but she did finally speak this week, at first telling the Daily Mail, “It’s too much.”
She went on: “I’m grieving hard right now. It will be a long time before I’ll feel ready to talk at any length. We’re still in the early stages of everything. We are working on the funeral arrangements. I don’t know where it’s going to be yet.”
Marcena, who founded a clothing line called, SZN Stitches, posted to Facebook this week, writing, “my sweet baby, words could never express how broken I feel, you’re my everything. I’ll love you forever my beautiful angel.”
Kneeland was just 24 when he died. Marcena is 22.
FacebookCowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland and girlfriend Catalina Marcena, from her Facebook post.
Kneeland’s death came 20 months after the death of his mother, Wendy.
Back on February 18, 2024, just days before the start of the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, where Kneeland would solidify his professional future after his career at Western Michigan, Wendy, died suddenly of an undisclosed illness. Kneeland headed into the Combine with a heavy heart, of course, but did not go public about his mother’s death.
He said at the time, “A lot of people don’t know because I really don’t talk about it too much … It was tough, it still is, but I know at the end of the day the thing that gets me through it is she spent all her life trying to get me to go here and supported me as much as she could to get me to the NFL.”
Around the NFL this week, there were moments of silence held for Kneeland as the Cowboys were idle in their bye week. The Cowboys are returning to practice, and trying to return to business as usual, as much as possible, in preparation for Monday’s game against the Raiders.
Team owner Jerry Jones first addressed Kneeland’s death publicly in a radio interview in Dallas this week, saying he was, “devastated.”
“I think we all have unfettered feelings about the people we love, people we work with, and this is just a time when you acknowledge that there’s no answers,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas. “It makes you want to live life to the fullest. It makes you want to look for the very best in what we have for each other. And in some way make sense out of these times in terms of what they can mean from helping those that are here on Earth right now.
“All of those things are very natural, come to mind, but his death is such a national awareness thing that it takes on some of that light when we think about how we go forward.”
The Kansas City Chiefs and Rashee Rice — and just about everyone around the KC community — are waiting on waiting on pins and needles for an update as the NFL deliberates the length of the star wide receiver’s expected suspension.
In a recent update from NFL Network insider Tom Pelissero, the well-informed reporter stated that the league proposed a “double-digit” suspension, in terms of games. But in a new update from ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter on August 19, the proposed number of games was actually lessened a bit.
“My understanding is, initially, the NFL would have liked to suspend Rashee Rice for eight games,” Schefter said on “The Adam Schefter Podcast” on Tuesday night.
“Now, that doesn’t mean a whole lot to me because it’s sort of like in a negotiation — somebody could ask for a million dollars a year, and the price is going to come in at $500,000 — so, it doesn’t necessarily mean a lot where you start out,” the insider explained. “But I think the league was of the mind right away that it would be eight games.”
After revealing that the NFL initially wanted an eight-game suspension, Schefter detailed what he believes will end up occurring.
“I think if we look at the collective bargaining agreement, the baseline suspension for a personal conduct policy violation is six games,” Schefter noted. “And I’m sure Rashee Rice would probably like it to be three or four games. So, if we have the league at eight, and the player — let’s just say — [is] willing to take four and the baseline [is] six, where do you think it’s going to come out? Especially when the [player’s association] is sifting through its issues and the league wants to exercise its power?”
“I don’t think it’ll be the maximum,” he continued. “My guess is the CBA says six for a personal conduct policy violation. And I know there have been other incidents that haven’t been punished as stringently as six games. But the problem that Rashee Rice has is there was video of it [that] played all over all the evening news — like, everybody’s seen it. And so when you see it, you could see what happened — and it gets the attention it did — I think the league’s gotta take a stand sometimes.”
“So again, I’m operating on the assumption it’ll be [a] minimum [of] four [games], possibly six,” Schefter finally concluded.
All in all, after hearing the possibility of a double-digit suspension last week and an eight-game suspension to start Schefter’s update, most Chiefs fans would probably be pretty pleased with an outcome of four to six games.
The official Rashee Rice hearing date is set for September 30, but it’s been made clear that an agreement can be struck before that date if the two sides negotiate some sort of compromise, as Schefter outlined.
On August 18, head coach Andy Reid briefly addressed the latest on the Rice front.
“Yeah… we’ve heard about the hearing part of it,” Reid first replied. “They’ve got to work all that out. I don’t know the details of it, I don’t think anybody does right at this minute. So, we’ll see where it all goes.”
The Chiefs HC also added that “when we hear [what they decide], we’ll do what we have to do.”
Between re-signing Hollywood Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster, and drafting Xavier Worthy and Jalen Royals in recent years, the Chiefs are well-prepared to weather a Rice absence at wide receiver. The only questions are when it will begin and how long it will last.