Scoops, scores & daggers

Garrett Wilson walked out of the stadium in Chicago and apologized to a 17 year old girl. She had traveled all that way to watch him play, and he was sorry about how the day had gone. Her mother says that apology is the reason she is back in school. Here is the whole thing. Her name is Riley Driskill. She is a senior in high school, and she was not even a Jets fan. She grew up on the Chiefs. In September she lost her best friend. After that she stopped sleeping. She stopped going to school. She stopped seeing the people she knew. Her mother, Becky, took time off work to be home with her. Nobody in that house was looking to a football game to fix anything. Now here is the part nobody could have arranged. Becky's boss is a man named Kenny Wilson. Kenny Wilson is Garrett's father. He had passes for the game in Chicago against the Bears, and he offered them. Becky asked her daughter if she wanted to go. Riley said "Of course." Then she asked one question. "Am I going to see Garrett?" They had met him one time before, at MetLife. She asked him to make a TikTok and he said yes. That was the entire relationship. One TikTok. Understand who she was asking about. He came out of Ohio State and went 10th overall. He signed an extension this year worth 130 million dollars, with 90 million of it guaranteed, averaging over 31 million a year. No receiver in the history of the league had ever gotten that after only three seasons. Men who sign those do not generally come looking for anybody in a tunnel. So here is what happened when he came out of the players' exit. He apologized to them. Sorry you came all that way. Sorry it was that kind of day. Then he hugged her. He put his arm around her for a picture. He signed her jersey. All her mother could say was this. "You are amazing." Here is how Wilson explains it. "Treat everyone how you want to be treated." His own father describes him as "gracious and nice and loving." Riley has gone to school every day since. She is around her friends again. She has started looking at colleges. This is what her mother says about that. "If it wasn't for him, she might still be in a dark room." "It made her day. It brought life back into her." Kenny told Garrett later what the whole thing had meant to her. Here is what Garrett said back. "She made my day as well." Now the honest part. One hug does not fix what happened to that girl, and her mother has never said it did. Riley had people around her and she is the one who got up every morning and went. And Wilson never told anybody about any of this. A reporter went and found it. But a kid who had stopped leaving her own house traveled to another city to go watch a stranger play football. And the stranger came out and told her he was sorry.