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None of us ever know when it’ll be our last day. That’s especially true in the NFL. Especially for guys who’ve played 10 years or more.
The 2021 Arizona Cardinals have so many such veterans that when the team trainer saw a few guys goofing off in the locker room and told them to act their age, they retired.
Kevin Beachum, Aaron Brewer, Jack Crawford, AJ Green, Rodney Hudson, Chandler Jones, Andy Lee, Colt McCoy, Corey Peters, Matt Prater and JJ Watt all have a at least a decade of experience under their helmets. (If Larry Fitzgerald comes back, he’ll join his college teammate Lee as one of the deans of this fraternity of ol’ fogies.) So if this season is the last for any of them, here’s hoping they go full throttle and treat each play as if it’s their last — sort of how Cardinals legend Edgerrin James did.
“I maxed it out,” the newly enshrined Hall of Famer said.
“I don’t miss much,” he said. “I got it out of my system. I was able to walk away without being forced. … there’s not much that I can say I miss because I maxed it out.”
‘You see yourself’
The average NFL career is somewhere between two and four years, depending on how you measure it. So any players who exceed that are doing something right, but they’re also living on borrowed time. That realization tends to leave players feeling introspective.
“When you’re in your ninth or 10th year and you see those kids come out there, you go from being a player to a mentor without even really realizing it,” said James, who played 11 seasons, including three with Arizona.
“You see yourself,” he said. “That’s the thing you start appreciating. You think, ‘Man, I’ve given this game a lot, and this game has given me a lot. And I see this young guy, let me give him as much as I could, because there was a guy in my position who gave me as much as he could.”
That full-circle experience is something defensive players experience, as well.
Former Cardinals linebacker Eric Hill was one of the first players to wear red in the desert to start his career, having been drafted in 1989, just one year after the Red Birds flew southwest in the summer.
He was starstruck, playing alongside guys he had watched on TV his whole life from Roy Green to Stump Mitchell.
“Roy Green said, ‘Youngblood, you hang around long enough and somebody’s gonna be saying how they used to look up to you,’” Hill said.
Toward the end of his career, he ended up in St. Louis with the Rams.
“It’s funny,” Hill said. “When you become the guy that’s been around for double-digit years. It’s amazing how many of the things that you’ve thought and said that come back. … That young guy, first-year rookie was London Fletcher.
“He was like, ‘are you the same Eric Hill that played at LSU and Arizona?’ It was déjà vu. I said, ‘You last long enough, and you’re going to be the old man.”
Fletcher played 16 years.
‘All in all, I have no regrets’
The only guy suiting up in Arizona with that type of longevity is punter Andy Lee, who played at Pitt with Larry Fitzgerald. Lee will be in his 18th season this year. Fitzgerald would be in his 18th, if he decides to return to the field.
That means his last play would have come on a stalled drive at the end of the game that sealed the Arizona loss in a mostly empty State Farm Stadium.
If the last play doesn’t go the right way, it can peck away at a guy.
Kani Kauahi almost didn’t recover from his last play.
“At one point in time, it was a recurring nightmare,” the retired center said. “Through the years, time has been kind, and I’ve been able to make peace with it.”
Kauahi had come back to Arizona as a long snapper for the 1993 season, and it was the first time in his career that he had a secure roster spot.
“I had snapped 10 years, previously,” he said, “battling for every opportunity, every seat on the plane, every jersey that I got. I was one of them bubble guys. Never had a spot. Had to go earn it.”
But now there was no competition.
“I wasn’t prepared for the mental letdown,” he said.
He had a bad snap.
“I had lost the competitive edge to battle through that adversity and consequently got swallowed up by it … through the years, I’ve been able to make sense of it, to a degree, and make sense of it and to move on with life.”
These days, he’s a coach with the Arizona Rattlers. They’re 12-2 and looking for an Indoor Football League championship.
If he were to have a sit-down with all of the 10-year vets on the current Cardinals roster, he’d ask them whether they would do anything differently? He wouldn’t. And he wants them to feel the same way.
“All in all,” he said. “I have no regrets. No misgivings. I’m thankful and fortunate for the opportunity that I had.”
None of us ever know when it’ll be our last day. That’s especially true in the NFL. Especially for guys who’ve played 10 years or more.
But it seems like trick is to treat each play like it could be the last – and knowing that, fans should cheer the same way.
Reach Moore at [email protected] or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.
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