I'm with you bod... for a brief second i hated ricky when my friend woke me up at 2am to tell me what had happened. But i agree, if he hates it and can be secure financially and just have fun the rest of his life, who can really blame him. Most guys end up with a totally beat up body and cant even enjoy retirement after football. I'm with most of the board in that i'm just truly disappointed in the timing and the way he handled it. He said it was such a burden for him and he's "finally free" which leads me to believe he could have easily made this decision at the end of last year. This wasn't a sudden thing, it's been in his head awhile now. This is a team and a city that turned his career around, gave him a new contract (if you remember how awful his old one was) and made him a community favorite and helped give him the strength to make this decision and battle his social disorder.
Basically, the trade to miami and the city of miami gave him a new lease on life and helped make him a better person/player and give him the strength to make this decision. I just wish he could have been slightly less selfish with the timing, and consider all they have done for him as well...either retire at the end of last year, or maybe announce that this would be his last season and retire at the end of this year as that is not uncommon in sports.
It's a shame, it really is. Having said all that, im really not concerned with our team this season. We've won with lamar smith and other not so big names at RB. We've won with fiedler at QB, we've won without receivers the likes of chambers/boston and certainly without a TE like mcmichael and we've won without a defense that was this good (i expect ogun to re-sign now).
So the morale of our team is probably at an all time low, with this culmination of our atrocious offseason, and our initial gameplan is probably completely shot but we have great leaders(zach, seau, taylor, etc...), and still enough to compete for a playoff spot in the NFL with the parity in this league. last three years there hasn't been an elite runningback winning the Super Bowl. So while i have mixed emotions and was devastated by the news, I'm ok with it and ready to move on, we will be fine as a team. Hopefully the front office doesnt panic anymore and throw out too much money to a less than capable back or make an unreasonable trade.
I'd like for them to pursue deshaun foster or michael bennett (highly unlikely as tice has made him his guy), maybe onterrio smith, and i wished we hadn't sent leonhard henry to europe now, but what can you do. It's time to move forward and it is nice to not be super bowl favorites for a change heading into the season. Teams will definitely take us a little more lightly and won't be as geared up to stop the run for sure, will ease some of the pressure off the o-line not having so many guys in the box i'm sure.
Should be interesting to see how it all shakes down, but it is not the end of the world.
