Jets left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson surprisingly set to retire
New York Jets fans, would you like the good news or the bad news first?
The good: You now have the salary-cap savings to sign your starting quarterback.
The bad: It will cost you your left tackle.
In a surprising move, D’Brickashaw Ferguson has opted to retire at the age of 32, according to ESPN. Although his play had leveled off recently, Ferguson has been one of the few models of consistency on offense for the Jets the past decade, playing every single snap over that time, as one of the team’s most dependable players along with center Nick Mangold.
Well, not every snap.
What makes this so interesting is that there’s reasonable assumption that Ferguson is relatively healthy. He was asked to take a pay cut to help the cap-stricken Jets save money and afford quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick after weeks of silence from the Jets about Ferguson’s future. He was set to cost the Jets $14.1M against the cap this season, with a base salary of $8.6M, a roster bonus of $1M and a workout bonus of $750,000.
Now that’s all gone. Adjust your mock drafts accordingly — the Jets now badly need a tackle. The depth chart there is perilously thin.
They had talked to a few free-agent tackles in the past month, and the Denver Broncos still have Ryan Clady, who could be an (expensive) option. Another intriguing veteran option might be former New York Giants left tackle Will Beatty, who is a free agent (whose relocation costs might be manageable, too). But the draft appears to make the most sense to address this need. GM Mike Maccagnan’s job just got a little tougher.
Perhaps this makes defensive lineman Muhammad Wilkerson, who is on the trade block, more likely to be moved. Sitting with the 20th pick in the NFL draft, the Jets might be just on the outskirts of where the top four tackles could be drafted, after which there appears to be a dropoff at the position. Wilkerson has been mentioned as a possibility for the Chicago Bears, who pick 11th, so connect the dots if you will.
The Jets now have cleared up more than $9 million of cap space, with just over $5M hitting as “dead money” this season that had been prorated over the final two years of the deal.
But it’s interesting to look back and read what Ferguson wrote in a first-person account to Sports Illustrated back in December about his concern about head injuries, brain damage and CTE after reading the book “Concussion” and watching the movie that was spawned from it.
Ferguson wrote:
“Since seeing Concussion, I can’t avoid wondering if I am in danger of experiencing some degree of brain injury when I am done playing. It couldn’t happen to me, right?
“… Though I cannot remember ever having a concussion, I now know as an offensive lineman that it is the frequency of collisions that can ultimately lead to brain injury. It’s a different conversation when you are involved in the story and not just watching a movie about it. I fear the unavoidable truth is that playing football has placed me in harm’s way, and I am not yet sure of the full extent of what it might cost me.”
In the piece, he was not very complimentary toward the Jets or the NFL for the way he believed it handled the concussion crisis previously. And now Ferguson is walking away at a still-young age by football standards. Perhaps he doesn’t want to wait until death to find out if he has a problem or not.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
