Geriatric Warriors

The past couple of days the Pittsburgh Steelers American football team released defensive end Aaron Smith and wide receiver Hines Ward. This has brought up the question, should these players retire? This got me thinking when does a player know that they should retire or better yet do they get the hint from society that its time to call it a career. One of the saddest sights to see in professional sports is when a former star athlete, one that was the face of the sport or of a team is struggling to hang on and is only a shell of him self. You see the player miss simple plays that they would have been able to make with their eyes closed only a couple seasons before.

Emmitt Smith

It is also a depressing moment when you see this former star struggling to make plays in another team’s uniform. You know something just doesn’t seem right but you just can’t put your finger on it. There have been countless examples of this but some of the most well known are Joe Namath playing his last season for the Los Angeles Rams (Namath played twelve seasons for the New York Jets) or Johnny Unitas with the San Diego Chargers (Johnny U played seventeen seasons with the Baltimore Colts). Namath that last season played only four games even though he was healthy and completed a career low 46% of his pass. His last season with the Jets should have been it for the former playboy of the NFL. Unitas probably held on three seasons to long but that last one was just as bad as Namath’s, five games and 44% of his passes were complete. When Emmit Smith left the Dallas Cowboys he was tripping over his feet with the Cardinals that was another sad sight to see, or Michael Jordan with the Washington Wizards.

Sometimes you have players hang on one or two seasons too long just to win that championship title. Sometimes that forgettable season capped off with a championship puts a player in the Hall of Fame or they get the upper hand in an argument.