Heartbroken Vikings will honor rookie Khyree Jackson all season

The first full day of training camp for Vikings rookies was supposed to be an early milestone in Khyree Jackson’s career. On Monday, as General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and coach Kevin O’Connell discussed plans to honor the cornerback through the 2024 season, Jackson was there only in memory.

Jackson was killed along with two of his high school teammates in a three-car crash on July 6 in Maryland, his home state. The Vikings announced that players will wear helmet decals, and coaches will wear lapel pins, with Jackson‘s initials throughout the 2024 season. The team will also give Jackson’s $827,148 signing bonus to his estate, and cover more than $20,000 of Jackson’s family’s expenses for the funeral on Friday to remember Jackson and Isaiah Hazel, his friend who was also killed in the crash.

Adofo-Mensah, O’Connell, defensive coordinator Brian Flores, special teams coordinator Matt Daniels and defensive backs coach Daronte Jones will attend the service, and the Vikings plan to fly Jackson’s family to Minnesota for a private celebration of life service with the team. Jackson’s No. 31 and his locker will go unused in the team’s practice facility all season, and the team plans to put a design on its practice fields to honor Jackson.

”It’s a tragedy that he’s not here,” Adofo-Mensah said at the Vikings’ first news conference since Jackson’s death. “I want to pass my condolences to his family, the Hazel family and the [A.J.] Lytton family, as well.”

Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell praised the team’s owners, the Wilf family, for how they handled the situation.

“We have great ownership here,” Adofo-Mensah said. “It’s never a question of details or anything like that. It’s always, ‘What’s the decent thing? What’s the human thing? What’s the right thing to do?’ That’s the question [the Wilfs] always ask myself, [senior VP of football operations] Rob [Brzezinski] and Kevin in these environments.”

Jackson’s death cut short a football journey that captivated the Vikings before they selected him 108th overall this spring. He had quit football, working at a Harris Teeter grocery store and Chipotle in Maryland, before returning to college and eventually developing enough to play at Alabama and Oregon.

Adofo-Mensah remembered watching Jackson doing one-on-one drills against a receiver at the Senior Bowl — “He had a penchant for commentary, let’s say,“ the GM said — and recalled their conversation in his office before the draft about why Jackson’s favorite song (by hip-hop artist Major Nine) mattered to him.

”He said, ‘Kwes, there’s no wishes in this life. You get out of life what you put into it,’“ Adofo-Mensah recalled. “His joy, the way he attacked life, and that hard-working spirit were why we were so excited to add him to this building.“

The news of Jackson’s death reached O’Connell through a 4 a.m. phone call while he was on the West Coast during Fourth of July weekend.

“It’s the call, as a head coach, we all fear more than anything,” O’Connell said. “To get that phone call and know, not only Khyree but two other lives were lost, all young adults gone way, way too early, it just leaves you heartbroken.”

The Vikings quickly tried to connect players with grief support resources; O’Connell learned through summer phone calls how many teammates already felt close to Jackson because of his convivial spirit. Other NFL coaches, O’Connell said, called to offer their condolences.

”A lot of times, you become really close to these guys,” he said. “They become almost like kids of your own. You worry about them. So there’s no playbook, no way to go about it [as a coach]. But I do think it’s my responsibility to make sure that all of his teammates, as well as his family and the people who were closest to him, know how much I cared for him, and how much we all care for each other.”

Thirty-eight players, including rookies, quarterbacks, players recovering from injury and several other veterans, had reported for Vikings training camp by Monday morning, with the remainder of the roster due to report on Tuesday. O’Connell said he ordinarily waits until the full team has arrived to address the group, but in light of Jackson’s death, he pulled the Vikings’ early reporters together after their conditioning test to talk.

”I just made sure they’re aware of the resources we have to help, and just let them know how I was feeling, where I’m at,” O’Connell said. “It’s OK to feel however they’re feeling.“

One of the ways Jackson’s death might reverberate is as a reminder.

”I think it’s a wake-up call, in a lot of ways, that we’re not guaranteed another day on this earth at any point in time,” O’Connell said. “There’s not one player in that locker room that probably didn’t think about, ‘Could that have been me?’ So I don’t know if one thing correlates to the other, but I would say, the gift we get every single day to be part of this organization, my message is going to be, ‘I’m not going to take a single day I have with you guys for granted.’ You hate that moments like this are what make you have that point hammered home: just how fortunate we are to get the opportunities that we do.”