Yahoo Sports Ex-Rams RB Todd Gurley says his NFL career is 'most definitely' over
Todd Gurley was among the most effective running backs of his generation, but he's now officially out of the sport.
The former Los Angeles Rams running back confirmed to NFL Network's Andrew Siciliano on Friday that he is done playing football, ending a career that ended up lasting only six seasons.
“I don’t think there’s any question about that one,” Gurley said when asked if he was "calling it quits."
When asked to confirm he wasn't coming back to the NFL, he added "Yeah, most definitely."
Gurley later indicated on Twitter that this is hardly a new development on his end. He last appeared in the NFL in the 2020-21 season as a member of the Atlanta Falcons.
Y’all Late‼️
So ready for a story I can’t even do my own first for my friends and family..— Todd Gurley II (@TG3II) October 21, 2022
The conversation came after many speculated Gurley had retired due to an extended Twitter thread in which he thanked many of the other running backs who took the field during his time in the NFL. Gurley said he did it to show gratitude to a group of people who can't always share how the feel:
“I just wanted to show gratitude, man, because there’s a lot of guys that’s on this earth and especially as all alpha males, we don’t show the love that we’re supposed to. I just wanted to let those guys know that I appreciate them for everything that they’ve done for me, just from an inspirational level, just from watching those guys when I was four or five years old.
"We don't do that a lot, man. We don't pick each other up, we don't congratulate each other. We see each other postgame and that's pretty much it. I just wanted to let everybody know that I appreciate everybody."
Gurley posted 6,082 rushing yards, 67 rushing touchdowns, 2,254 receiving yards and 12 receiving touchdowns during his short career. It was an incredibly productive tenure, but its quick end goes to show that Father Time simply does not care about production when he swoops in.
Todd Gurley is Exhibit A in how quickly a running back's career can end
In the 2018-19 season, Gurley ran for 1,351 yards, scored a league-leading 17 touchdowns on the ground and added another 580 yards and four touchdowns through the air for an elite Rams offense that took the team all the way to the Super Bowl.
Two years later, he was playing his last NFL snaps, for a different team, averaging 3.5 yards per carry.
Few, if any, jobs in sports grind an athlete down like running back, and Gurley was already facing a headwind when it came to health considering he entered the NFL while recovering from a torn ACL during his standout career at Georgia.
There were no doubts about Gurley's effectiveness as a runner, as shown by his 10th overall selection in the 2015 NFL draft, and the Rams' gamble of using a high pick on a running back was seemingly vindicated when he made his debut in time to post 1,102 rushing yards and win Offensive Rookie of the Year honors.
Gurley played at least 14 games for the next three seasons, including that 2018-19 season, but knee issues became an increasingly serious concern. In 2019, it was reported Gurley had arthritis in his knee, and his career promptly started going downhill. After a relatively down season in 2019-20, the Rams released him.
Gurley is obviously an extreme case in how things can go wrong for a running back — not every player is going to develop knee arthritis — but his story is yet another reminder that medical red flags don't go away just because the player is good.
