Why Chiefs’ Trent McDuffie changed numbers, and why it makes him ‘feel like me again’

Chiefs defensive back Trent McDuffie was 13 when his second-oldest brother, Tyler, died from what he calls a heart complication.

“Out of nowhere,” he said in an interview with The Star on Monday at the team’s Missouri Western State training camp. “He was sick for two weeks. And then I just woke up, and he was gone.”

The inconceivable loss of a dedicated brother, a brother who pointed the way and looked over him, left McDuffie in shock and feeling he had entered a “black hole.”

“I just really blacked out,” the California native said, “for a good two years.”

As he thinks about it now, McDuffie figures it wasn’t until he arrived at the University of Washington that he began to truly deal with it and learn to accept all the emotions. Having that distance enabled him, he said, to “separate things and kind of build upon what happened.”

Funny how fate wrapped all that back together.

Because when he arrived in Seattle and entered the locker room his first day on campus, he found he’d been randomly assigned jersey No. 22 — the number Tyler always wore.

You could call it coincidence.

Or say it’s just a number.

But if you’ve ever lost somebody you loved, it’s not hard to imagine the heart and comfort you can take in wrapping yourself in something of theirs or otherwise embracing something that makes you feel their presence.

“It felt like, ‘OK, this is what’s supposed to happen,’” he said. “I felt like I was on the right path.”

Sure was.

A stellar career at UW primed him to be selected by the Chiefs at No. 21 overall in the 2022 NFL Draft.

After earning a starting job, he suffered a hamstring injury in the opener at Arizona and missed the next four weeks.

But he returned to become an integral part of the defense, including breaking up two passes in the AFC Championship Game victory over Cincinnati, and established himself as a core part of the team.

All while being stuck wearing No. 21 as a rookie since Juan Thornhill already was wearing No. 22 when McDuffie arrived.

When Thornhill signed with Cleveland in the offseason, though, McDuffie reclaimed the charm within days.

And he’s glad he did.

“Something about the 2-2 …” he said. “I feel like me again.”

Not that he didn’t feel himself last year.

In fact, he figures it was good to stretch himself with a new number. Plus, it was only right to wait.

The respectful McDuffie didn’t ask Thornhill to indulge him last year, he said, because it would have been presumptuous and inappropriate to bother a veteran about that. Besides, he still carried Tyler’s image in a tattoo on his arm and through his No. 22 chain and in his heart.

As it happens, McDuffie said, Thornhill later learned of the story and told him he’d have gladly given him the jersey.

“‘You know what, Juan, I appreciate that. That tells me a lot about you,’” McDuffie recalled telling him. “But I felt like there was something special about just being able to be (number) 21 last year for my rookie year. How it played out, how everything happened.”

Including, of course, the feeling of winning the Super Bowl with eight family members he’d flown in and paid the way for.

They’d become so close after the tragedy, he said, that it was already true “you can’t get one without the rest of the family coming.”

Against this canvas in Arizona, that was all intensified. He was elated as his parents made their way down to the field to join the celebration, but he also was eager to be with his three remaining siblings.

“When you lose a brother, there’s something that happens with siblings that you kind of just all morph together,” he said. “I remember finally looking up and seeing them and it was just like, ‘Man, we did this.’

“It wasn’t, like, ‘I won the Super Bowl.’ It was like we all finally got here, finally reached this goal. And it was special.

“It was so many emotions. It was so much happiness.”

As he thinks of it now, anyway, no one had to even directly mention Tyler.

In certain ways he’s ever-present.

“At this point, it’s kind of just known,” McDuffie said. “It’s more of a feeling versus words that you have to say. There’s not many words that you can kind of say to describe it or help you out with things.

“It’s more just being in each other’s presence. Being there in the moment with each other. That makes all the difference.”

He figures that sensation will be with him all the more now back in No. 22, which he acquired within days after Thornhill left. He let the world know it with an Instagram post that photoshopped No. 22 over his No. 21 in a scene from last season.

The very first to reply, incidentally, was Thornhill, who wrote “Love it” with two hearts and the number 22. Among the first group were fellow 2022 draftees George Karlaftis, Skyy Moore and Nazeeh Johnson, part of an extraordinary 10-man class that each played in the Super Bowl and had quite a common thread of dealing with personal tragedies.

Among those: Karlaftis’ father died in 2014. Isiah Pacheco suffered the loss of two murdered siblings. Joshua Williams’ mother died when he was six months old.

Only weeks after they’d all met, McDuffie referred to a sense of brotherhood among them.

And while he now says “you don’t go into extreme details” with each other about such losses, he added, “It’s cool when you’re able to talk to teammates and they truly get it.”

Nobody, of course, gets it like family.

Which is why No. 22 isn’t so much a mere number as it is a form of emotional armor.

“It allows me to play for something bigger than myself,” he said. “And knowing I’ve got the 22, my brother’s number, my family’s name on my back, being out there on the field, it’s like I’m not alone.

“I’ve got my whole family with me, the whole city with me, my brother with me.”

In a way he never pictured before he went to Washington.

Up until then, he said, he wore No. 24 and then No. 7. Never Tyler’s 22 or his oldest brother’s 26.

“‘I can’t wear my older brother’s numbers,’” he remembered thinking. “And then I ended up falling into it and realizing, ‘This is special.’”

Even as much as he rationalized the 21 last season, well …

“Now that I’m out here in the 22,” he said, smiling, “it feels really good.”