Maurice Jones-Drew announced his retirement from the NFL today via Twitter, walking away from the game just a few days shy of his 30th birthday.
All good things come to an end!!! pic.twitter.com/zl6EJQ5SAE
— Maurice Jones-Drew (@Jones_Drew32) March 5, 2015
In football years, it’s been forever since Jones-Drew looked like the dynamic every-down back that he was in his prime with the Jacksonville Jaguars, when he averaged 1,440 yards rushing per season from 2009-2011. Last season, his first with the Oakland Raiders, the 5’7″ half-back turned 43 carries into just 96 yards for a 2.2 average following his final season with the Jaguars, when he ran for 803 yards but averaged only 3.4 yards per carry.
A second round pick out of UCLA in 2006, Jones-Drew split time with and then took the baton from Jaguars great Fred Taylor. With the Jaguars, Jones-Drew caught 335 passes for 2,873 yards and ran for 8,071 yards. His 68 rushing touchdowns currently stands as the most in team history.
Jones-Drew’s move to the Raiders last season was a homecoming for the Oakland product and the arrival of former Jaguars head coach Jack Del Rio seemed like a happy coincidence this off-season. But with a a $2.4 million dollar cap hit for next season and a recent track record that made him expendable, it seems that Jones-Drew decided to retire rather than search for a new home. It’s also possible that he didn’t want to linger and put himself and his family through the rigors of training for another punishing season in an effort to chase after something that may be impossible to restore.
As of now, there’s no word what Jones-Drew will do in retirement, but he’s young, he’s personable, and he’s got experience on camera thanks to a cameo on The League and behind a mic as the host of his own Sirius/XM radio show, so it’s possible that Jones-Drew will be a highly sought after free agent in that marketplace now that he’s done playing.
(Source: Twitter)
