The best news of the entire
offseason came Monday night.
Linebacker Dan Morgan retired after seven NFL seasons.
This isn't going to be your typical column talking
about how sad it is to see a player walk away from the
game.
This is going to be celebratory in tone because
retiring now is what's best for Morgan and his family.
In fact, the only thing that slightly dampens Morgan's
walking away now is that he should have done it a year
sooner.
After covering Morgan from the day he was drafted in
the first round by the Carolina Panthers in 2001, there
came a point -- and I can't remember exactly when --
that it became obvious he was a walking time bomb. Was
it the third documented concussion? Or maybe the fifth?
During that time, stories kept popping up about retired
players and the problems they were having later in life
as the result of concussions they'd had as players. The
stories were gruesome, and the last thing anybody who
has ever met Morgan would want to see is his ending up
like that.
Reporters and the players they cover aren't supposed to
be friends. It's just the rules of the business. You
don't get too close to them so you're not in an awkward
position if they screw up and you have to write about
it. They don't get too close to you because -- well,
you're in a different tax bracket.
But of all the guys I dealt with as a beat writer
covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Panthers, Morgan
made that line the most blurry. He was just a very
regular guy. The kind of guy who'd take a cell phone
from a reporter in a Spartanburg, S.C., pizza place and
wake another napping reporter and tell him to get over
there.
The kind of guy you'd like to grab a beer with if the
rules for reporters and athletes weren't in place and
if Morgan didn't have his own set of rules. The guy
took pride in the fact that alcohol had never touched
his lips.
That's how dedicated Morgan was to football and his
body. The game was sacred. He grew up as the son of Dan
Marino's former bodyguard. The body was sacred.
Nobody's conditioning program was more strenuous than
Morgan's. A columnist I worked with in Charlotte went
down to South Florida soon after Morgan was drafted to
watch him work out.
Morgan plowed through sand dunes for an hour in May
heat. He stopped … to throw up and, then, went
right back to running.
But that's the irony of it all. Once he got to the NFL,
Morgan's body betrayed him. The injuries started right
away, with Morgan going down with a broken leg in his
rookie season. Weird things kept happening and Morgan
never was able to play a full season with the Panthers.
When he did play, he was spectacular. It gets
overshadowed because the Patriots won, but Morgan made
25 tackles in Super Bowl XXXVIII. There were a few
other outstanding games through the years and, at his
best, Morgan stacked up with any linebacker in the
league.
But the injuries kept coming, and then the concussions
started piling up. There was one in the 2006 preseason
followed closely by another in that season's opener.
The Panthers shut Morgan down for the season, and some
pretty important people in the organization tried to
tell him it was time to walk away.
Morgan couldn't. He went to numerous concussion
specialists and the consensus was he could return to
play in 2007. The Panthers had a huge decision to make.
Could they even let Morgan back on the field?
Owner Jerry Richardson knew if Morgan didn't play in
Carolina, he'd play somewhere. If Morgan was going to
play anywhere, Richardson decided, it should be with
the team that drafted him. Reporters and fans rolled
their eyes and hoped they weren't about to see a
worst-case scenario.
But that became moot three games into last season, when
Morgan went down with an Achilles tendon injury that
would sideline him for the rest of the year. In the
meantime, rookie Jon Beason showed he was a healthy
version of Morgan. The Panthers again suggested to
Morgan that he retire and he declined. They released
him and Morgan signed with the New Orleans Saints in
March.
Sometime in recent days, Morgan began seeing what the
rest of the world had seen for the past couple of
years. He has a lovely wife and two beautiful children.
He's 29 and has all the money he'll ever need. He still
seems to have reasonable health.
Watching Morgan the past couple of years, you couldn't
help but get the feeling that things were going to end
horribly if he kept playing. Maybe one more concussion
would be one too many.
That's why it's time to celebrate. A guy, a truly good
guy, who seemed to have tunnel vision only for
football, finally looked around and saw a great life
outside of football. Then, mercifully, he walked away
while he still could.
(espn.com)