Former NFL punter Kasey Redfern has died at 35 after a long fight with brain cancer, as South Carolina officials confirmed the loss and his wife described his final decline.
Breitbart News reported that South Carolina officials said former NFL punter Kasey Redfern died at age 35, with details on the death not yet released.
Jonathan Lawson, chief investigator at the Spartanburg County Coroner’s Office, reported that Redfern had passed away. The office has not released cause or manner of death.
Redfern’s wife, Lauryl, had already told followers the family was moving him toward hospice care after years of hard treatment. The news closes a short pro career and a longer private battle that began with a brain tumor found years earlier.
Redfern came into the league out of Wofford College. He joined the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2014.
Over four seasons he bounced through the Chargers, Panthers, Browns, Lions, Cowboys, and Falcons. Punting is a specialist’s job with little fame and less job security. He did the work anyway.
That path is common for college kickers who stick in the league only as long as the next tryout goes well. Redfern made it far enough to wear several NFL uniforms before the real fight began off the field.
A GoFundMe campaign set up in 2023 first made the illness public. It revealed that Kasey had a brain tumor. Doctors later identified the tumor as CNS lymphoma in the brain, a cancer that attacks the central nervous system.
Treatments stretched across the next 3.5 years. In a Facebook post, Lauryl Redfern described what those years cost him near the end.
She wrote that her husband, “the love of my life,” had made a “move toward hospice care.”
"It seems that everything he’s been experiencing over the last couple of weeks, the falls, extreme decline in short-term memory, random throwing up, and some other things- is likely due to cognitive decline caused by neurotoxicity from all of the treatments he’s had over the last 3.5 years,"
She added the plain reason for stopping aggressive care:
"His poor brain has had all it can take treatment wise so we want to make sure that he can be as comfortable as possible,"
The symptoms she listed, falls, memory collapse, sudden vomiting, match what families often see when heavy cancer treatment finally overwhelms the body it was meant to save. She did not blame the disease alone. She pointed to the cumulative toll of the therapy itself.
Lauryl’s post did not stop at medical detail. She spoke as a wife preparing for heaven, not only as a caregiver listing symptoms.
"makes it to Heaven soon, he will have it better than the rest of us and for that all I can do is be thankful and joyful and filled with peace (and a lot of jealousy) that He will be WHOLE and in glory with our Savior, the best place we could ask to be."
That is the language of a family that still believes death is not the last word. In an age that often treats faith as private decoration, she put it in public view while her husband was still alive and fading.
Officials in Spartanburg County have confirmed only the death. They have not filled in the final medical record. Until they do, the clearest account of his last weeks remains the one his wife gave while she was still trying to keep him comfortable.
A 35-year-old man who once kicked in the NFL is gone. The rosters move on. His wife’s words remain, treatment had taken all his brain could give, and she wanted him whole again with the Savior she trusts. That is the measure that outlasts every temporary contract.
