Pro Bowl safety Sean Taylor died Tuesday after he was shot in his home by an apparent intruder, leaving the Washington Redskins in mourning for a teammate who seemed to have reordered his life since becoming a father.

The 24-year-old player died at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he had been airlifted after the shooting early Monday.

“It is with deep regret that a young man had to come to his end so soon,” father Pedro Taylor said in a statement on behalf of the family. “Many of his fans loved him because the way he played football. Many of his opponents feared him the way he approached the game. Others misunderstood him, many appreciated him and his family loved him.”

A string of mourners, including Taylor’s father, visited the player’s home and embraced outside. Authorities entered the home, but it was unclear what they were doing.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the league will honor Taylor’s memory at all games this weekend.

“This is a terrible tragedy involving the loss of a young man who leaves behind many people struggling to understand it,” he said in a statement.

Redskins coach Joe Gibbs said what he would remember most about Taylor was his excitement about playing football.

“God made him to play football,” Gibbs said Tuesday during a news conference. “To me, he just loved and thrived on the competition part of it. … Sean, he loved football. He loved these guys here.”

Gibbs acknowledged it will be hard to concentrate on football this week.

“I don’t know how we’ll deal with it, except we’ll all do it together,” he said.

Fans already had begun a makeshift memorial by laying flowers on a field near the front entrance to the Redskins’ practice facility in Ashburn, Va.

“This is a terrible, terrible tragedy,” Redskins owner Daniel Snyder said.

He added the team would honor Taylor with a patch on the jersey and the No. 21 on the helmet.

Once again the sports world was struck by a tragedy and it is a grim reminder that the world of professional sports is just a game. Life is the most sacred thing in this world and something needs to be done in this nation to stop all these senseless killings.

It shouldn’t take the death of a star athlete to open peoples eyes across this wonderful country to see that we need to crack down immediately on violent crimes.

America is the best and most powerful country in the world. The freedom Americans have to do whatever they want is the reason their is no better place to live in the world than the United States of America.

America should not be a place where you are killed in your own home with your girlfriend and child by your side. Its time for the government to start worrying more about the problems of this country and let the other countries around the world take care of their own problems.

The AP contributed to this story.