Retirement in the NFL is often a misnomer.
Players don’t typically “retire” from football so much as they’re not wanted anymore, not by their team or any of the 31 others across the league.
But in the past 12 months, more and more of the world’s best athletes have chosen to leave the sport on their own terms.
Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Jason Worilds walked away from an eight-figure contract as a free agent last year for religious reasons. A number of San Francisco 49ers — Patrick Willis, Chris Borland and Anthony Davis, chief among them — quit around the same time because of concerns about their health.