NFL players know when it’s time to retire.
Sometimes, you can see it coming a mile away. It is part of a well-formulated plan, and it happens after the season. That is an opportune time for a retirement announcement to come, because it allows the team to regroup and find a replacement as they get ready for the next season.
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Other times, though, it happens right out of the blue. There’s no warning from the outside. All of a sudden, the player has just decided that he’s had enough.
The latter was the case last Sunday morning as the Philadelphia Eagles were getting ready to play the Los Angeles Rams that afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field. Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson decided that he was going to step away from the game.
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it was a shock to everyone, both emotionally and from a roster standpoint, because one of the best right tackles in the game was no longer going to be part of the team.
The Browns had a situation like that 36 years ago. In the 1990 training camp, right in the middle of a morning practice at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, seventh-year offensive lineman Ricky Bolden just started walking down the long hill toward the dressing room.
What in the heck was going on? When reporters finally questioned him in the locker room, Bolden said he was done and that he was going to go into church ministry. Nobody knew anything about it, including head coach Bud Carson. A bunch of media people were standing around Carson, and one of them said, “Hey, Bud, where is Ricky Bolden going?” Carson‘s startled response was, “I don’t know.”
Five months before, in March 1990, right tackle Cody Risien, like Johnson now one of the best right tackles in the game then, announced his retirement after 11 seasons. That was planned. But not so with the situation involving Bolden. The loss of the two players really hurt the Browns offensive line, and it showed as the season wore on as a team that had been to the AFC Championship Game three times out of the four previous seasons, including in 1989, finished with what was then a franchise-worst record of 3-13. Halfway through the 1990 season, with the Browns really struggling and well on her way to that disastrous record, Carson was fired. It set the stage for the Browns to eventually hire a young defensive coordinator from the New York Giants named Bill Belichick.
Steve King
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