Colin Cowherd: “Don’t tell me that all retirements are equal and we should celebrate ALL players equally… What if the Super Bowl was the Chiefs versus the Eagles and Patrick Mahomes retires the Saturday night before the game saying he can’t take the stress and he’s mentally exhausted? We all good with that?? Leaders do not bail on the infantry before battle. This is why you ask when you draft a quarterback about mom, and about dad, and about family. How will you handle the money? How will you handle the stress? You pay for a lot of things with quarterbacks, not just ‘he’s got a big arm!’ or ‘he can really run!’… You pay for maturity, leadership, toughness, guile, mettle, durability. One of the narratives I didn’t like was ‘HEY, PLAYERS CAN RETIRE WHENEVER THEY WANT!’… No you can’t. The defining quality of all quarterbacks is leadership.” (Full Audio at Bottom of Page)
Listen to Colin Cowherd explain why not all retirements should be celebrated just a week after now-former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck shockingly retired from the NFL at the age of 29.
Although Colin says he didn’t have a problem with Luck retiring, given the fact he took a lot of physical punishment on unequipped Colts teams that he was often a one-man team for, he also says star quarterback can’t just retire whenever they want.
Colin says the quarterbacks are paid some of the highest salaries in professional sports because they’re supposed to be the most influential player on the field. Much like generals leading their troops into battle, Colin says generals, much like quarterbacks, can’t just run away when the mental stress of a job becomes too overwhelmingly. That’s why they pay these guys the big bucks expecting them not to flake out, and why team meticulously vet during the Draft process to try and discover weak personality traits that might suggest a future flameout.
Check out the audio below as Colin argues why the media shouldn’t just blindly celebrate players retiring.
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