Dawson Knox and the $230,000 That Nobody Asked For
Luke Knox died August 17, 2022, found in medical distress in his FIU dorm room. He was 22 years old. No cause of death was ever publicly announced. No foul play was suspected. The university canceled practice, brought in grief counselors, and said very little. Dawson Knox left the Bills’ training camp and was gone for about a week.
By the time he came back, Bills Mafia had donated $230,000 to a pediatric cancer charity – not because Dawson asked them to, but because they already knew which one mattered to him. The donations came in at $16.88 each: Luke’s number at FIU was 16, Dawson’s number with the Bills is 88. Nobody organized it. The P.U.N.T. Pediatric Cancer Collaborative’s website crashed under the volume. Nine thousand and fifty donations, mostly from strangers, in a denomination two brothers shared without ever coordinating it for this purpose.
Dawson hadn’t tweeted anything. Hadn’t asked. “It was just an automatic response from our fans,” he said. “It’s just another example of why we have the best fans in the world.”
The money became Luke’s Locker – a program at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, the city where the Knox brothers grew up, mirroring a program Dawson had already built in Buffalo. Fifteen percent of the proceeds seeded it. The hospital sees roughly 300 new pediatric cancer patients a year. Luke’s Locker helps those families with gas, groceries, parking vouchers. The kind of thing that sounds small until you’re the family driving an hour each way for chemo.
Dawson had gotten involved with P.U.N.T. two weeks into his rookie year in 2019, introduced to the organization by then-teammate Lee Smith, who took him to Oishei Children’s Hospital to meet kids and families. His cousin had survived bone cancer. He kept going back on his days off. By 2022 he’d already helped the charity raise over $50,000 through Knox Sox – colorful Bills-branded socks he sold, partly because he’d gone to the hospital enough times to notice that every kid was wearing the same generic gray socks with rubber grips on the bottom. That year, after Luke died, he pledged $100 for every reception and $1,000 for every touchdown.
None of that is the story the NFL usually tells about its tight ends.
From walk-on fullback to franchise record-holder
Knox showed up at Ole Miss in 2015 as a walk-on fullback. He’d played one half of his senior year at Brentwood Academy – ankle injury ended the season – and before that had played receiver as a junior. Between junior and senior year he grew four inches and gained 50 pounds. By the time he got to Oxford he was 6-foot-4, 254 pounds, built like a tight end but listed as a fullback and burning redshirt year one on special teams.
He caught 39 passes for 605 yards over his career at Ole Miss, left after his junior year, and the Bills traded up in the third round of the 2019 draft to take him 96th overall – moving a fourth-round pick to get there. His first NFL touchdown came in Week 3 against the Bengals, a catch from Josh Allen followed by a 49-yard reception where he ran over two defenders to set up a Frank Gore touchdown run. Buffalo won 21–17. He finished that rookie season with 28 catches, 388 yards, two touchdowns – and 22 drops on 50 targets, which is the part that got remembered.
The drops never fully went away, but the big-play ability got louder. In 2021 he caught three passes for 117 yards and a touchdown against Kansas City. On Thanksgiving he caught two more, pushing his season total to seven receiving touchdowns – breaking the Bills’ franchise record for tight ends in a single season. The following September, Buffalo signed him to a four-year, $53.6 million extension, making him one of the top-paid tight ends in the league.
2022 ended with 48 catches, 517 yards, six touchdowns. Then 2023 brought a wrist surgery that cost him seven weeks, and he finished with 22 receptions, 186 yards, two scores. 2024 was similar: 22 catches, 311 yards, one touchdown. At that point the questions started – was Knox worth the cap space, was he declining, should Buffalo move on?
The Bills faced a legitimate decision heading into 2026. Knox was due $12 million in cash, with a cap hit of $17.1 million. Cutting him would have saved $9.7 million. Brandon Beane said publicly during exit meetings that the cap situation made Knox’s return “unknown.”
Then Knox had his best season since 2022: 36 receptions, 417 yards, four touchdowns across 17 games in 2025. He led the team in receiving in a Week 14 win over the Bengals. He scored two touchdowns in Week 15 against the Patriots, helping Buffalo erase a 21–0 deficit, and celebrated his daughter’s birth – she’d arrived in December – on the field in Foxborough. He surpassed Pete Metzelaars’s franchise record for career touchdowns by a tight end, finishing with 26. On March 10, 2026, Buffalo re-signed him to a three-year deal, keeping him under contract through 2028.
Draft night, and who Luke was
Luke Knox played linebacker and tight end at Ole Miss, appeared in 23 games over four years, mostly on special teams – 11 tackles total. He transferred to FIU in the summer of 2022, expected to compete for a starting linebacker spot that fall.
The night Dawson was drafted, Luke was there. He was so excited when the pick came in that he came in for a hug and accidentally caught his brother in the mouth. Dawson bled on his draft photos. “He had blood all in my teeth for half the pictures,” Knox said later, laughing.
On Instagram, Luke posted: “So dang proud of you bro. Time to go get what’s yours!! Love you.”
They had played together at Ole Miss for one season, 2018. The same coach, Mike MacIntyre, had coached Luke at Ole Miss and then brought him to FIU. “While I admired his passion for football,” MacIntyre said after Luke died, “his genuine love for his family and teammates is what I will always remember.”
Dawson called him his number-one supporter. “His legacy is going to live on through his locker,” he said in November 2022, when Luke’s Locker was announced. “We couldn’t have been closer as brothers.”
The cause of Luke’s death was never made public. The Miami-Dade medical examiner performed an autopsy. The results were not released. Dawson has not discussed it specifically. At some point a person decides what to keep private, and this has stayed private.
What Buffalo gave back
A moment of silence before the Bills’ first preseason game after Luke’s death. Texts. Posts. The $230,000, which kept coming in for days. P.U.N.T.’s executive director, Gwen Mysiak, said the donations took down the website: “We are being held and his brother’s memory is being lifted.”
Dawson’s parents found out the total and their “jaws dropped,” Knox said. The organization used the proceeds to establish Luke’s Locker in Nashville, to fund a “Helping Hands” endowment for families dealing with the financial fallout of a child’s cancer diagnosis – housing payments, utilities, medical bills – and a Last Responder Fund to support families through bereavement and funeral costs.
Knox came back to practice after about a week. “I kind of realized that for the first time when I came back up here after everything,” he said about Buffalo. “It really does feel like a second home.”
He still donates per reception, per touchdown. Still visits Oishei Children’s Hospital on off days. Still sells Knox Sox, with 25% of proceeds going to P.U.N.T. He announced in early 2026 that he was expecting his daughter. He’s now 29, re-signed through 2028, entering his eighth year in the league, playing for a new head coach in Joe Brady and working under tight ends coach Rob Boras – the relationship with Boras was one reason Knox pushed to stay.
His Instagram bio says: Isaiah 40:31. Buffalo Bills. Nashville.
In that order, those three things cover most of it.
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