It’s one of the most shocking on-field storylines in years. Saturday night news broke that Colts’ quarterback Andrew Luck, who’s battled injuries throughout his career, would retire from the league at age 29. It sent shockwaves throughout the NFL as one of its brightest stars was hanging up his cleats just two weeks before the start of the regular season.
Football, obviously, has the shortest life span of any professional sports career, and it’s certainly not uncommon to see players out of the league by their mid-to-late 20s. However, it is rare for someone of Luck’s caliber to call it quits before hitting 30. Here’s the list of folks who moved on before many folks would have ever guessed:
Andrew Luck:
The four-time Pro Bowler just came off a season in which the 1-5 Colts finished 10-6 and made it to the AFC Divisional Round. Luck himself tossed 39 touchdowns and threw for 4,593 yards after missing all of 2017 with an injury. Ultimately, the injuries and recovery became too much, between a shoulder injury, a torn ad muscle, a lacerated kidney, rib issues, a concussion and, most recently, a lingering calf problem. He’ll retire having more passing yards by age 30 than everyone in NFL history except Dan Marino and Peyton Manning, and he has more passing touchdowns by 30 than all but Marino.
Patrick Willis:
Willis was quietly one of the most dominant forces in football for nearly a decade in San Francisco. The 2007 Defensive Rookie of the Year made it to seven Pro Bowls and was named an All-Pro five times, twice leading the NFL in tackles. A toe injury ended his 2014 season after just six games, and after continuing to struggle with the same problem for years, retired in March 2015 at age 29.
Calvin Johnson:
Megatron’s age-30 season in 2015 was pretty on-par for the rest of his career: 88 receptions, 1,214 yards, nine touchdowns and a Pro Bowl nod, his sixth. Though not quite the force he was in 2011 and 2012, when he combined for 218 grabs, 3,645 yards and 21 scores, he was still among the best wideouts in the game. Then in March 2016 he retired a year after whispers started to come out that he was thinking about walking away.
Of course, he’s not the first Lions legend to retire early...
Barry Sanders:
In 10 seasons the Hall of Famer never had fewer than 1,115 yards in a season, and never less than 1,352 in a year where he played at least 15 games. In 1998 at age 30 he finished with 1,491 yards and four touchdowns, earning his 10th Pro Bowl nod. The six-time All-Pro, two years into a six-year contract with Detroit, then hung them up in July 1999, faxing a letter to his hometown newspaper in Wichita, Kansas. He retired second on the all-time rushing list (he’s now third) and his 15,269 career rushing yards are still the most ever by a running back in a 10-year span.
Jim Brown:
Another Hall of Fame running back, Brown led the league in rushing in eight of his nine professional seasons. That includes three of his most productive seasons from 1963-65, when he averaged 1,618 yards and 12 touchdowns per season – remember, they only played 14 games a year back then.
But in the summer of 1965 Brown the actor, who had a three-picture deal with Paramount, went to London to film The Dirty Dozen. Filming was taking longer than planned, to the point where he might missing training camp and the early stages of the season. This didn’t go over well with owner Art Modell, who essentially gave Brown an ultimatum, so the back retired.
