What the Big Stories will be this NFL Offseason

More than arguably any other American sports league, the NFL has a grip on the national audience that lasts year round. Sure, it takes a back seat to the NBA and NHL in the spring, and the MLB in the early summer. Still, though, every day throughout the NFL offseason, you can find analysts and pundits on every form of media making bold predictions for the upcoming season, reporting on events within the league, or just generating interesting headlines out of nothing. At its core, though, the NFL offseason is about personnel. Especially in a league where teams start with 90 players at the beginning of training camp (which is whittled down to 53 players on the active roster by opening day), there's always buzz about who over/underperformed in the combine, what draft picks are going to different teams, and which veteran players may be traded, cut, or signed to new contracts.

In the past few years however, the biggest stories haven't just been about free-agent signings, but instead about young players deciding to leave the game early. Indeed, it seems like every year more and more NFL players are retiring "early" due to concern about the long term effects of head trauma, concern with other injuries, general disinterest in the game, or some combination of all three and/or other factors.

Now, it's hard to really define what retiring "early" is in the NFL, for many reasons. Primarily, according to the NFL Player's Association, the average career is only 3 1/2 years long, meaning that a player retiring at age 26 would technically be around retirement age, even though he might still have a lot left in the tank physically. Additionally, different positions have different expected career lengths due to disparities in the physical demands and levels of contact. A running back who is 29 would be considered pretty old by NFL standards, and yet many quarterbacks and kickers player into their late 30s. Tom Brady, for example, was named MVP of Super Bowl LI last Sunday at age 39, and hopes to keep playing for several more years.

Regardless of the subjective nature of what is "early," though, I think it's pretty commonly agreed upon that the vast majority of professional athletes play until they either A. get cut from a team or B. physically can't play anymore. So, for argument's sake, I consider someone who retired early to not fall under one of those two categories.

Around the start of this blog, I wrote an article about Chris Borland, a former all-American linebacker at Wisconsin who started for the 49ers as a rookie, who walked away from the NFL in 2015 after only one year, choosing to forgo millions of dollars and what would likely be a long, successful career due to concerns over football and TBI. Earlier today, Bengals linebacker Trevor Roach, age 24, announced his retirement from the league. Now, the Bengals organization officially stated that Roach had lost simply lost interest in the game, and I'm not saying that he retired for the same reasons as did Chris Borland. But in addition to citing a dwindling interest in the game, lost time with family, and desire to start a new career, Roach also commented to media, "I've seen guys play for 10 years and have their bodies beat up and I didn't want to do that."

Calvin Johnson

Now it's one thing for younger, emerging players to leave the sport when less of their life has been built around it, and their legacy within it is not as strong. It was and is quite another when one of the best players in the entire NFL decides to retire while still in great shape and at the top of his game. But that's exactly was Lions receiver Calvin Johnson did last offseason after nine years in the league. Now, nine years is a long NFL career compared to the average. But in that nine year span, no player had more receiving yard or receiving touchdowns than did Johnson. In fact, he set the NFL single-season record with 1,964 receiving yards in 2012. Still a borderline hall of fame candidate now, most agree that he would have been in the discussion for the greatest NFL receiver of all time had he played around five more years and put up decent numbers. Yet he retired at age 30, citing concerns over his long-term health. Now, he didn't point to head injuries specifically as the cause for his decision, but they were certainly a factor; he said in an interview, "I don't know how many [concussions] I've had over my career, you know, but I've definitely had my fair share." Johnson's statement is especially concerning because he never was listed with a concussion on an NFL injury report in any of his 9 seasons, which calls into question the reports' integrity (I've discussed this topic in a previous post on De'Anthony Thomas).


So, anyway, this offseason we'll obviously see a handful of big name players retire after long careers and years of wear-and-tear on their bodies. But what I think the more interesting stories will be, and I'm certain that there will be a few of them, are the younger guys who will follow the precedent set in the past few offseason of players retiring early in order to look out for their long-term health.