A football player’s mom died shortly after he was drafted into the NFL. After Derrick Harmon was chosen by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft, the defensive tackle sped to the hospital to tell his mother, Tiffany Saine, the good news. She passed away shortly afterwards, according to Gerry Dulac, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Saine’s health had been struggling for several years, after she suffered a stroke in 2022 that left her paralyzed on one side. Before rushing off to the hospital, Harmon told reporters that being drafted was “a little bittersweet. My mom wasn’t with me. She’s at the hospital right now on life support.” The defensive tackle, who played for Michigan State before transferring to the University of Oregon, reportedly had to cancel some of his pre-draft visits with NFL teams in recent weeks to stay by his mother’s side. But that didn’t stop him from getting drafted as the No. 21 overall pick. Harmon said of his mother, “She worked just as hard as me to get to this moment.”
