Packers’ Micah Parsons shares powerful reminder about playing amid Marshawn Kneeland’s tragic death

Although he’s no longer with the Cowboys, and even if he only played a season together with Kneeland, Parsons shared a passionate take that gives everyone outside of football a reminder that football players have emotions, too.

In this career, how people look at it, you always got to be second like this is a football first, everything else later job, and that’s what the fans expect you to be ready, your coaches expect you to be ready even, your teammates expect you to be ready, but in reality to say that we’re emotionless and we don’t have feelings, and you know, you got to put things to the side all the time is just not realistic, Parsons said (via Dominique Yates of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

Continued Parsons: “I have to find a way to embrace my emotions, embrace everything that I’m feeling for his family my former teammates. I got former teammates that are devastated. They can’t comprehend it, losing teammates like a brother. People don’t realize how much we’re actually together,  like time spent.

So that’s the challenges, like you, we’re putting away a brother like regardless like this NFL is a brotherhood, so it doesn’t matter who it is like if you’re breaking sweat breaking blood with someone, whether it’s the on the opposite team or on the same team, it’s a brotherhood. Trying to put that inside is challenging, but like I said, we got to find it because there’s an expectation comes Monday night.”