SADLY : Atlanta Falcons, bad news Just today, a crucial player was confirmed dead.

Bryant Young of the Atlanta Falcons considered his kid, who died of cancer, to be his superhero.

ATLANTA — Atlanta Falcons defensive line coach Bryant Young often thinks about the joyful times he had with his son Colby, a kid who had a passion for football and a knack for cooking.

He also remembers the sadness that overwhelmed him when he uttered his last words to his teenage superhero.

“I told him just how much I appreciated his courage and his resilience,” Young said as his voice cracked. “And I told him I love him. I told him how much I was proud of him, for the young man to go through something like that.”

Bryant Colby Young died of pediatric cancer at age 15 on Oct. 11, 2016. Bryant Young knew every day without his son would be difficult, but especially days such as Colby’s birthday on Aug. 19 and the anniversary of Colby’s death.

“Every day has its own challenge,” Young said, “but when you’re going through the first of everything — the first birthday, the first year of him passing — and actually the day before, too, just anticipating what the day would be like. I definitely always want to remember him in a special way.”

Colby was known as a delightful, vibrant young man. His family never imagined a day of throbbing pain would result in sorrow for years to come.

Unexpected news

It was 2014, and Colby was an eighth-grader playing football in Charlotte, North Carolina. He came home one day complaining of a headache.

Young, a Hall of Fame nominee who played 14 seasons on the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive line, figured he knew what the issue was with his son.

“I thought he got dinged,” Young said. “But he was like, ‘No dad, I didn’t get dinged.'”

Young saw that something was off when Colby woke up on a Wednesday morning in excruciating pain with no desire to eat. There was a middle school retreat the same day, one Colby eagerly packed for the night before, but the pain drained him of his enthusiasm. He couldn’t sit up at the dining room table, so Young’s wife, Kristin, took Colby to the pediatrician.

“The doctor looked at him and thought at the time, he was 13 and was going through puberty, and that’s pretty common for a kid that age to possibly have migraines, as growing pains,” Young said. “So she prescribed him medication for migraines.”

The pain never subsided throughout the remainder of the day. Colby began to vomit. The pain intensified by the next morning.

“He was bald at the time, but he was trying to pull his hair out of his head, so we knew it was something more serious,” Young said.

The Youngs returned to the pediatrician. The prescription for the migraine changed. But before leaving this time, Colby underwent a CAT scan, which finally revealed the cause of his painful episodes: a mass on his brain.

“Hearing the news, he was scared. My wife was scared,” Young said. “They diagnosed it as a pineal tumor. It was about the size of a golf ball in his pineal gland region [vertebrae brain].”

Colby needed surgery. The surgeon performing it had completed the “risky” procedure in the past.

“He felt pretty confident that with what he had seen before and had removed that it was going to be OK because it wasn’t growing out and was contained,” Young said. “He said he wouldn’t know if it was non-cancerous until sampling the tissue and removing it. We thought we caught it.”

The surgery dragged on for four hours, which seemed like an eternity. Bryant and Kristin continued to cling to the doctor’s words about it being an “operable” process. Then the surgeon emerged bearing news.

“Just the look on his face, I didn’t like it,” Young said. “I just had this eerie feeling about it being bad news. So he gets us into a conference room and tells us that it was cancerous. It was an even bigger blow just to hear that.”

There were never any signs of Colby being sick while growing up. He played football and basketball without issue.

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