Remember the Ole Miss game LSU played last year in October? It was a thriller, without a doubt, that went into overtime. Baton Rouge turned into a festival that day as Kyren Lacy began racing away, leaving defenders in his wake. We witnessed Kyren Lacy at his peak, showcasing his exceptional skills and demonstrating to Lane Kiffin that his offense wasn’t effective everywhere. The performance was breathtaking, and the player?

Lacy went on to finish the season with 866 receiving yards at an impressive average of 14.9, scoring nine touchdowns. The gates of the NFL had just opened, and everything seemed to fall into place. The player not only improved himself season after season but also showed moments that even most pro receivers couldn’t match. His progress was incredible, as he earned his second-team all-SEC spot and cemented his elite talent. But then a tragedy struck.

It was widely reported that the talented wide receiver passed away, as reported by the Houston area police. It all happened when, on April 12th, a call came from Lacy’s home about the wide receiver being in a verbal argument with a family member and going away in his car. The authorities pursued him for a while, but Lacy allegedly crashed his car. The officers then reported having found the player having shot himself. The news was shocking, devastating, and heartbreaking.

Now, after several days, Lacy’s former teammate, Jack Bech, who currently plays for the TCU Horned Frogs, opened up about how the grief was too much to take for Lacy’s girlfriend. “So his girlfriend, she—I was on the phone with her a few days ago. We’ve been family friends with him for a while. And she was calling like all his real good friends and teammates that they were close with, about just trying to tell stories and calling me specifically, just about how to get through everything, you know, me losing my brother and her losing her best friend.”

Jack also lost his brother, Tiger Bech, in a tragic terror incident that shook New Orleans. Tiger played for Princeton as a wide receiver and had 188 yards in the 2018 season. The loss of a gem like Lacy has started discourse around mental health and how football players sometimes ignore all these things. Surely, with NIL and money involved, the onus should be more on checking up on mental health and making sure that college football is a place where these things are spoken about without hesitation.

Brian Kelly reflects on Kyren Lacy’s death

The loss of Kyren Lacy hasn’t been easy for LSU players and coaching staff and the program as a whole. Brian Kelly, who also came when Lacy joined the college in 2022, was asked about the player and the legacy he is going to leave behind in the program. Kelly, visibly emotional at the question, reflected on how jolly and cheerful Lacy always was. Moreover, the head coach also reflected on Lacy’s ability to make everyone laugh whenever he wanted to.

“Unfortunately, in my career, um, you know, this is not the first time that this has happened um you know, mental health is part of one of the facets of player development that you’re working within my field, and unfortunately, it’s happened before”. Kelly surely had a rough past when he was at Notre Dame and had to face another tragic death of a fellow student.

Kelly, at the time, was the head coach of Notre Dame when Declan Sullivan died. Sullivan, the university student photographer, was filming Kelly’s practice sessions on top of a scissor lift just when high-speed winds crashed the lift, and the student tragically died after that. The incident also created buzz around Kelly choosing to hold practice in strong winds. In the case of Kyren Lacy, that is not the case, but here, too, mental health concerns need to be highlighted, and college football should work in tandem with that.