Fans can only see the football side of a player. They don’t have regular access to his personal life. That is something easy to forget. Chicago Bears fans couldn’t understand what happened to Tarik Cohen in 2019. The year before, he was a budding star. In a full season of work, he amassed 1,169 yards from scrimmage, 411 punt return yards, and eight touchdowns. He’d be named an NFL All-Pro. Many couldn’t wait to see his encore the following year. What they got was disappointment.
Cohen managed just 669 yards from scrimmage, 302 punt return yards, and three touchdowns. A significant decline from the year before. Everything about how he played seemed off. He wasn’t hitting holes like he used to. He settled for going out of bounds way too often. The guy didn’t look like himself. Most people chalked it up to him becoming soft and unwilling to take hits. In reality, no one could’ve imagined the tragic culprit behind his decline.
The former running back decided to tell his story.
In a fantastic article penned by Cohen for the Player’s Tribune, he wrote a letter to his 17-year-old self sharing everything he wishes he would’ve known at the time. Nothing more so than how his family would start to fracture in the years during his ascent to the NFL. Despite getting drafted by the Bears in 2017, Cohen wasn’t earning enough money to support them yet. As a result, his brother Dante got involved in drug dealing. This led to several incidents between the two, including Cohen flushing thousands of dollars of crack cocaine down a toilet after Dante was arrested.
He did it to wake his brother up to the suicidal path he was going down. It didn’t work. Dante kept dealing, and sure enough, the reckoning arrived in July of 2019.
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It will be the middle of the summer, before your third season in the league. You’ll be looking forward to telling the world your story of going from an HBCU to the NFL, and ready for a breather from all the drama back home. Something to take your mind off … pretty much everything else.
When you pick up the call, you won’t be expecting anything out of the ordinary.
What’s up, bro?
Tyrell will be sobbing.
“Dante just got shot.”
Then a pause. And more sobbing.
“He got shot in the head, Tarik.”
Tarik Cohen had no idea how to react.
It was a day he’d long feared was coming, but nothing prepared him for that news. It only got worse when he saw his brother and learned the heartbreaking results. Dante had shot somebody when they tried to rob him. Then he was shot in retaliation. He’d be paralyzed for the rest of his life and could never communicate like he used to. It was then Cohen nearly saw his life take an irreversible turn.
You’ll grab the pistol you have registered in North Carolina, jump in your car, eyes full of tears, and head out looking for revenge. All you’ll know is that the person who shot Dante was wearing a red shirt. And you’ll be shaking with anger. You won’t be stable. You’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, holding that gun, ready to risk it all, to lose everything, for your little brother.
It’ll be like: Red shirt. RED SHIRT. RED SHIRT!!!!!!
Thankfully, for everyone involved, you’re not going to find Red Shirt.
It is difficult to blame him for that sort of reaction. Despite their arguments over the years, Dante was still his brother. They were family. When somebody attacks your family, emotional responses are inevitable. Thankfully his search for vigilante justice didn’t end in further bloodshed. However, the consequences of the tragedy were felt a few months later when he had to go back to playing football.
That 2019 season will end up being your worst as a pro. It won’t go anything like you’d hoped — both individually and for the team as a whole. It’s going to be tough to stay positive on many different fronts.
This explains so much.
With newfound context, it is easy to see why Tarik Cohen didn’t look like Tarik Cohen in 2019. He didn’t have the same focus, lost in thought about what had happened to his brother. He gave it his best effort, but the same edge wasn’t there. All he could do was cringe when forced to go back and watch the tape of that season. Having had time to process, he was confident 2020 would be different. Then he suffered a catastrophic knee injury three games into the season. One didn’t realize how bad it was until getting the test results back.
At first, you actually won’t be too worried.
It’ll be like, I’ve seen dozens of guys bounce back off ACL injuries. No big deal! But it’ll be one doctor’s visit after another, and the news will only get worse. Turns out you not only tore your ACL, you also tore your MCL. And you fractured your tibial plateau.
Brutal. Absolutely brutal.
If people were wondering why Cohen failed to return on time from his perceived ACL injury, that is why. It wasn’t just the ACL. It was pretty much everything that involved his knee. As rehab began, hope remained that he could still bounce back quickly. Then before the start of training camp in 2021, yet another gut punch arrived when Cohen lost his twin brother Tyrell following a car accident and fleeing into the woods of Wake County, North Carolina.
Tyrell tried to climb some equipment at the substation and touched something that electrocuted him. Just like that, he’ll be gone.
Your twin, your companion from the beginning, gone.
Later that day, you’re going to have to tell Tyrell’s two little girls that their daddy isn’t coming home.
Learning this story, it is incredible that Cohen has somehow persevered through such trauma. Especially after the Bears were forced to cut him this offseason. He claims the knee feels 100% for the first time in years and his old speed is back. His goals moving forward are clear. Return to the field and show everybody he can still play. Even more importantly, it’s to take care of his brother’s children. He’s already bought them a house and plans to pay for their college educations.
While he remains in pain, he isn’t going to let the hurt control his life. He will learn to live with it and strive to become a better man as a result. It is fair to wonder if all those who criticized Cohen could manage the same.
