On a day where the baseball world got flipped upside down, the world of competitive American football would not stay silent. Luke Kuechly, at the prime of his career, is retiring from the game of football at the age of 28.
If that doesn’t make you feel sad then you simply don’t have a soul. Even before I heard Luke say it, I knew this wasn’t a decision he wanted to make. It was one that after painfully thinking about it for a long time that he believes is the only one he can make if he wants to have the life he wants to have for the rest of his life.
Luke Kuechly is retiring at the young sports age of 28 but it feels like he’s been playing for 15 years and that he’s older than me(33). He’s one of those guys that even though I didn’t strictly watch Panthers‘ games, you knew Luke was out there flattening fools. Check this out;
Tackling isn’t a super fun category to discuss, but in football, it’s pretty important and Luke Kuechly kicked ass at it. He kicked ass at it more than anybody else when he played.
We’ve known that the NFL is trending in this direction. The direction I speak of is that young guys, who are awesome at the game, who have 10s of millions of dollars on the table are walking away because they’re scared to death that they might become the Dave Duerson, Junior Seau, and the list of other NFL players that took their own lives.
They also don’t want to be the long list of older Hall of Famers that can barely walk at the age of 55. It’s not a value to them literally kill their bodies and mind for the entertainment of others like this is Roman Colosseum. Yeah, I know they’re getting paid millions, but these guys are figuring out that you can make a ton of money in about 6-8 years, retire earlier than expected and still be fine in life. Good for the Andrew Lucks, Patrick Willis, Doug Baldwins of the world. Good for Luke Kuechly.
By the Way- To the old farts that think that head injuries and the risk of CTE are nonsense, you’re dumb. To the new farts who think this, you’re equally as dumb.
