The Minnesota Vikings plan to remember Khyree Jackson in a variety of ways during what would have been the cornerback’s rookie season, the NFL team announced on Monday.
“He said, ‘Kwes, there’s no wishes in this life. You get out of life what you put into it,’” Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said at a Monday press conference while recalling a pre-draft meeting with Jackson. “Between his joy, the way he attacked life and then also just that hard-working spirit is partly way we were so excited to add him to this building, to this culture, and it’s a tragedy that he’s not here.”
A fourth-round draft pick from Oregon on April 27 who played at Alabama in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, Jackson died in a traffic accident on July 6.
Adofo-Mensah said he and coach Kevin O’Connell will lead a contingent from the Vikings to Jackson’s funeral on Friday. The team plans to hold “a celebration of life,” too, he said.
The Vikings also will wear helmet decals and coaches and staff members will wear pins as a memorial to Jackson.
Jackson’s locker and his No. 31 will not be used this season.
Minnesota plans to cover a “significant portion” of Jackson’s funeral expenses and will pay the remainder of Jackson’s signing bonus to the cornerback’s family.
Jackson signed a four-year, $4.847 million contract with the Vikings that included an $827,148 signing bonus. Jackson had not collected the complete signing bonus at the time of his death.
“It’s never a question of details or anything like that,” Adofo-Mensah said about team owners Zygi Wilf and his family. “It’s always: What’s the decent thing? What’s the human thing? What is the right thing to do? That’s always been the question they ask of myself, Rob (Brzezinski, vice president for football operations) and Kevin (O’Connell, head coach) in these environments, and we always give them that answer, and they always support it. …
“How I think we’ll all honor Khyree is by the memories we have of him while we travel every day and think and laugh and smile about what he might have said or what he might have did. How we live our lives, how we smile, how we live with joy, how we work hard, how we approach our craft, that’s how we’ll honor him on a day-to-day basis.”
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Although Jackson spent less than three months on Minnesota’s roster, O’Connell said he would be missed.
“Khyree was not a part of our team long, but the way our culture is, and more importantly speaking to our locker room and our players, it does not take long for guys to build strong bonds and relationships,” O’Connell said. “Just through my dialogue throughout the summer with some of our veteran leadership and how they were communicating their feelings and things, it was pretty remarkable to hear the kind of impact that he had in such a short amount of time.”
Jackson was supposed to report for training camp on Sunday. O’Connell said he said he spent some extra time with the group because of the loss of Jackson.
“Throughout the draft process and his early time being a Viking, you felt a guy who had such a laser focus on what his mission, his plan was,” O’Connell said, “and it really showed up in the spring. He had a very, very good spring and was really looking forward to coming back to training camp and being well on his way on that path to having a big impact on our team for this year. Just some of my personal dialogue with him and the work he was putting in throughout the summer, you just knew he was going to come back and do that.
“Ultimately, a tragedy. Like I said, a life ended far too early, and at the point of life he was at and the journey he had been on up until that point, really a guy who was on his way to what I believe in my heart would have been a very, very successful NFL career.”
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
