How Chiefs cornerback L’Jarius Sneed has begun to honor his slain brother during games
L’Jarius Sneed stood in front of his locker on a recent Sunday afternoon, just a few hours before kickoff. He slipped his pads over his head, followed by a long-sleeved T-shirt, before tucking his Chiefs jersey on top.
And then came a final touch that he’d been thinking about for the past couple of days.
He wrapped white athletic tape around both wrists, grabbed a black marker and penned onto his left wrist the short-handed abbreviations for a message that he knew only he would fully understand.
Long live TQ.
In the midst of a standout season that has many speculating what his future might entail, Sneed keeps his past close.
It was two years ago this month that he lost his oldest brother, T’Qarontarion “TQ” Harrison, in a fatal stabbing — an older brother who was once pressed into the role of something significantly more.
Sneed shared his life story with The Star in 2021, revealing that his first memories of both parents were visiting them in prison — his dad began serving time before Sneed was born, and his mom followed just a year later. When I asked who raised him during his earliest years, Sneed named someone less than 9 years his elder: Harrison.
We’ve shared that story.
We shared the story of Harrison’s death in December 2021.
We’ve not returned to the effect on Sneed that remains a couple of years later. He has quietly developed into one of the most valuable pieces on the best Chiefs defense of the era. Those two things are intertwined, he said.
As for that lasting effect? Well, this, for starters:
“Every morning, man, he’s the first thing on my mind,” Sneed said. “That’s just someone who raised me — someone I always looked up to. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him.”
Only recently, for the first time, did he feel comfortable enough to publicly promote the memory of his brother.
A little.
Two weeks ago, as the Chiefs prepared to play host to the Buffalo Bills, Kansas City defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo handed Sneed the chore of shadowing Stefon Diggs, one of the league’s truly elite receivers. It’s an assignment Sneed coveted initially and then outright sought.
Before the game, though, he stepped away from a deep study of the job and contemplated what the day would represent. He’d woken up that morning and, like any other, thought back to growing up with Harrison and their middle brother, TQ Mims. Harrison, in an interview with The Star a month before his death, described caring for Sneed as a baby and young toddler, feeding him bottles, changing his diapers and eventually walking him to school.
Parenting him.
On Dec. 10, the morning in which the Chiefs would build a defensive game plan around Sneed, it marked two years to the day that Harrison had been killed by a single stab wound to the back.
A collection of childhood memories have long stuck with Sneed. But that date with the Bills is the first time he’d taken the football field with a tangible remembrance for his brother.
“I was out there with confidence like never before,” Sneed said. “I knew he was gonna guide me throughout the day.
“I just felt his spirit with me.”
An unusual penalty became the story of that game, even trumping the result, a 20-17 Bills win.
If not? It would’ve been Sneed. Probably should have been a pretty big part of it anyway. He defended Diggs on 23 routes.
Diggs’ total output that day: one catch for 3 yards.
And if you ask his teammates, like cornerback Joshua Williams, the only play Sneed talked about after the game was that one catch. Hated giving it up. It’s “not in my DNA” to allow receptions, he said. And there’s no better peek into why the Chiefs tweaked his role this season.
It was over the summer that Sneed approached Spagnuolo with a request — he wanted to play against the best. And he wanted to do it as frequently as possible. Sneed said his brother possessed that kind of confidence.
So L’Jarius asked to follow opposing teams’ No. 1 wide receivers.
“’You know what?’” Spagnuolo recalled replying. “’We’re thinking the same thing.’”
Sneed has traveled with opposing teams’ top receivers six times this season, the most of any cornerback in the NFL, per Next Gen Stats. In other words, he has the most difficult job of any defensive back in football, and, mind you, we’re talking about perhaps the most difficult position in football.
Oh, and he’s yet to allow a touchdown, per Pro Football Focus.
It’s been a journey to get here, and that’s not only a reference to his childhood but also the level of play in the NFL. After all, the rookie version of L’Jarius Sneed was “lazy.” His word. Well, actually, he was basically repeating the gist of an instruction he received from Spagnuolo, who, during the COVID-19 training camp once walked past Sneed and said, “Pick this (crap) up. Pick it up.”
That anecdote is from three years ago.
But things have a way of sticking with him.
“If I see a coach get on me, I take that to heart,” he said, and then he paused before adding, “I don’t forget much.”
That could reference virtually anything.
A week after the two-year anniversary of his brother’s death, Sneed was just as good in New England as he’d been in shutting down Diggs in Kansas City.
On Monday, Christmas Day, Sneed will take the field inside Arrowhead Stadium against the Las Vegas Raiders. His family attends most games, some traveling in from his hometown of Minden, Louisiana.
So family will occupy part of the day. And football will take the other.
Sneed will likely draw the assignment of matching up against another of the game’s best wideouts in Davante Adams. But for a moment before kickoff, Sneed won’t think of that at all. He’ll return to his new pre-game routine, which he decided to keep around after that afternoon game against the Bills.
The pads, the undershirt and the jersey.
And then the wrap around his wrist, with a message peeking out from under his long sleeve.
Long live TQ.
This story was originally published December 22, 2023 at 5:30 AM.