Tag: Carolina Panthers

It’s not quite a regret. More like a “wish,” or an urge, or — it’s hard to explain.

The feeling Jalen Coker is trying to recall started on a balmy August night in 2020. A few childhood friends were over at the Coker household, and yes, high school was done, and yes, everything in their young lives felt destined to change.

But on that night, the soon-to-be-college-freshmen didn’t interrogate their futures. At least, not at first. They instead screamed over Mario Kart and nailed down logistics of their fantasy football draft and fought over the YouTube TV remote.

Coker, similarly, just “chilled.” And when a hand on his shoulder tugged him into a side conversation, he knew what was coming: a bear hug from Adam Oakes, his lifelong friend, and five simple words rising above Adam’s endearing verbosity.

“We’re so proud of you,” Adam said.

Coker smiled. He thanked his friend, returned the compliment and that was that. Coker had heard a lot of people say they were proud of him, after all. He was on his way to Holy Cross to play football, and all of Sterling, Virginia, was happy for him. That included his father, Jamal, and his mother, Jenny, and his younger siblings, Jemma and Jaxon. It included his coaches. It especially included his friends, who were utterly unsurprised that their 6-foot-1, backyard-beast-of-a-wide-receiver was getting his shot somewhere.

And among those outspoken friends was Adam.

Jalen and Adam had known each other all their lives. Both were born in October 2001. Both attended Countryside Elementary School, then River Bend Middle School, then Potomac Falls High School. Both lived in the same neighborhood: Coker on Regina Street, Oakes on Summer Breeze Court, just a few bike pedals away. They hosted birthday parties at the Dulles SportsPlex. They brawled in the cul-de-sac near the Oakes family’s house, the one with the mobile basketball hoop and the chalk-drawn 3-point lines. They competed on legendary Pee Wee football teams together and also on a downright “bad” freshman high school team together. They played video games and texted and went to parties.

They’d surely be in each other’s lives forever — with Adam watching as Jalen defied the odds to become an NFL playmaker; with Jalen watching as Adam graduated from Virginia Commonwealth and worked in the communications office for the Oklahoma City Thunder, or otherwise became “anything he wanted to be in life.”

Coker lived up to his side. He’s in his second straight season on the active roster for the Carolina Panthers, a key part of an offense that has yet to fully realize its potential as it settles in to make a post-Thanksgiving playoff push. But Adam couldn’t on his. He wasn’t given the chance. At 19, Adam passed away a few months after that makeshift goodbye, that no-second-thought farewell.

And that’s why that conversation feels weird to Coker now. “Weird” feels wrong, actually. “Somber,” maybe? Again, it’s difficult to explain.

It’s been five years since that day, and yet after a Saturday practice in Charlotte, Coker was brought back to the evening that was supposed to mean so little — to that predictable bear hug, that compulsory “I’m proud of you,” that response that through the unfair lens of retrospect doesn’t feel like enough.

“I just wish … ” Coker paused. The normally smiley 24-year-old had his hoodie pulled over his head. He was hunched in a chair, tired, arms over his knees, his eyes directionless. He shrugged and shook his head.

“I wish I said more, I guess.”

‘Is there something I could have done?’

Coker stomped onto the Levi’s Stadium grass in Northern California on Monday evening wearing something special. They were custom cleats, painted with red hearts and black brushstrokes that read “Love Like Adam.” They rep the Love Like Adam Foundation, an organization founded in response to Adam’s death.

It brought a tangible meaning to the idea that everywhere Coker walks, Adam is with him. It served as a reminder to everyone why Coker plays so hard, and who he plays so hard for.

“It has just pushed me to do the most I can with the time that I do have, and with the blessings that I have been given,” Coker told The Charlotte Observer, referencing his football ability but also his life. “Adam didn’t have the opportunity to, you know? So every game I say a prayer for him, and I make sure that he’s doing good in heaven.

“And I’m always thinking about him, and continuing to live my life the way that I think he would have lived his — and did live his.”

But to understand how he got here, in Santa Clara, California, under the Monday Night Football lights, you need to be transported to a darker day: February 21, 2021.

Coker had finished a college football workout at Holy Cross. It was late, and he was exhausted, and he was just trying to burrow his head into some schoolwork when he received a phone call from Cole Hartling, one of his best friends from back home. He picked up happily. Then he realized something was wrong.

He got off the phone and saw a stream of group chat messages. One shared the news that Adam had died of alcohol poisoning. The rest were reactions and questions and interjections of shock. None of it made sense, Coker said. Adam rarely drank, even when others around him did. He was always thoughtful, precise, careful. How could this be?

Coker, a seven-hour drive away and on a tight football regimen, couldn’t run down the street to one of his friend’s houses for answers and support, like some of his friends who stayed locally could. All he had was an unrelenting confusion.

“It seemed so unfair,” Coker said. “He didn’t ever do anything wrong. He never put himself in a position like that. I wasn’t getting all the information because not everyone had all the information. I was getting bits and pieces of it. They just said something happened on campus, and that he passed away, and I couldn’t even really think about what that even meant, you know?”

He added: “Selfishly, is there something I could have done? I don’t know. It was like my mind was just spiraling in a bunch of ways.”

Coker pieced together what happened over the course of a few days and from a mosaic of sources. Eventually, the events of the night came into focus:

On the night of February 26, Adam had accepted his bid in the Delta Chi fraternity at VCU. He was looking for a family on campus, a close-knit group of friends like he had growing up, and thought he found it among his pledge brothers and older members. Eric Oakes, Adam’s father, said that his son was pressured to drink a fifth of alcohol as part of a hazing ritual. He finished the bottle of liquor, passed out and was left alone.

Around noon on February 27, three Loudoun County Sheriff deputies knocked on the Oakes’ family door. Eric answered. They told him they should get his wife, Linda, who was taking a nap, before breaking some devastating news. So he did. There was confusion, shock, anger, devastation. He was their baby, their only child; the loss was incalculable. Eric soon received texts after word was spreading on social media. Before he did anything else, Eric figured out a way to get in touch with his father, Adam’s grandfather better known as Paw Paw; he was battling Stage 4 lung cancer but upon hearing the news still cried out: “Why couldn’t it have been me?”

Eventually six members of Adam’s fraternity pleaded guilty or no contest to charges of hazing and serving alcohol to a minor. The fraternity also was ordered to pay $4 million in the settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Oakes family.

“If it was up to Linda and I, we would have just curled up in the corner of a dark room and stayed there,” Eric, Adam’s father, said. “That’s kind of what we wanted to do.”

He continued: “But my niece, Courtney White, she’s like, ‘We have to use this as a teaching moment.’ … If it happened to Adam, I swear to God, it can happen to anybody.”

The special power of ‘Love Like Adam’

The Love Like Adam Foundation was created, officially, three months after Adam’s death. It was meant to support and educate anyone on the dangers of hazing and bullying and to implement hazing prevention education. It’s done that and then some.

The family petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to create “Adam’s Law,” which require, among many things, for colleges and universities to have in-person trainings that spell out the dangers of hazing. That was put into place by July 2021. The family also went to Capitol Hill and got the Stop Campus Hazing Act — a federal law — passed by the Biden Administration in December 2024.

The family presents at colleges and universities, speaking to 500 and sometimes 5,000 students at a time. The foundation produced a 21-minute documentary called “Death Of A Pledge: The Adam Oakes Story” that aired on PBS and won an Emmy. It created a hazing prevention curriculum that is required to be taught in ninth or 10th grade in Virginia — so it’s reaching about 100,000 students annually, Eric said — and does so much more, including awarding multiple $2,000 scholarships to prospective college students every year.

If there’s a single reason why the Love Like Adam Foundation has grown so much since its inception in 2020, it can be boiled down to just that aforementioned sentiment: If it can happen to Adam, it can happen to anybody.

Because if you knew Adam, and looked at him, you couldn’t help but see the best parts of yourself mirrored back to you, friends and family said.

That’s certainly true of Max Turner. He’s one of Adam and Jalen’s childhood friends. The day after Adam passed, Turner started a GoFundMe to ensure that Eric and Linda wouldn’t have to “bury their son on their own dime.” That deeply resonated with the Loudoun community and elsewhere — to the tune of $50,000. He’s also spoken at James Madison University, where he’s still a student, several times about the dangers of hazing. He called Jalen’s work uplifting the organization special: “He was already putting Sterling on the map,” Turner said of Coker. “And wearing the cleats, he’s bringing Adam and the foundation with him, too.”

Take Jamal Coker, Jalen’s father. He was a military veteran and understands the ritual of hazing, but he couldn’t believe the horrifying news. Jalen and Adam were raised by the same “village,” Jamal said, and that hearing Adam’s tragedy reminded him of someone else he loves: “They’re so close in age and ended up being friends. … It could’ve happened to Jalen, you know?”

Take Jalen Coker himself. He writes Adam’s birthdate — 10/06/01 — on his wrist tape on football games. He prays to him. He sees Adam everywhere, he said.

“The most positive thing I took out of it is just to continue to just be like him, because he was just so positive, loving, accepting, kind, generous,” Coker said. “Because if you do, then you’re going to be a good person. And that’s what I’m trying to do — just be my best version of him.”

‘I just hear Adam behind me’

The Oakes family and Coker have stayed in touch quite a bit over the years. Eric and Linda were at Coker’s draft party in 2024, for instance, and wrapped a teary Coker in a hug once he learned he made an NFL roster.

“I’ll text him from time to time, you know, just to tell him how proud we are of him, and how great he’s doing,” Eric said. The father laughed. “But I just hear Adam behind me going, ‘Don’t bother him. Leave him alone.’”

One time stood out in particular, Eric said.

“I think he caught his first NFL pass, and I texted and said, ‘Awesome, we’re so proud of you. Great job,’” Eric said. “And you know how players do, once they score a touchdown, sometimes they make a statement or something? Well, he shot the heart hands up at the stands.”

As in: he put his index fingers and thumbs together, making the shape of a heart. He’d done it before, in college, but something hit differently of him doing it in the pros, wearing NFL colors.

“I’m sure it was to his parents, or his girlfriend, or something,” Eric said. But Eric texted him anyway.

You know, that’s our logo. The Love Like Adam logo.

Coker texted him after the game.

It has lots of different meanings.

And that’s true.

To Coker, in fact, it means everything.