Questions about retirement become inevitable when athletes start getting into their 30s, in the vast majority of cases. Perhaps some sports have greater or lesser shelf lives, but when it comes to the NFL, 30 tends to be the sweet spot for how long the careers of good players last, give or take a few years.
And it’s no surprise that Pittsburgh Steelers DL Cameron Heyward has faced those questions—often with no help from himself—the last couple years.
He has seemed to try to end that annual talk this year by making it very clear from the outset that he has the desire to continue to play. That doesn’t mean there might not be something financial to work out with the team, but he was quite clear. He said that in the minutes following the Steelers’ postseason loss, and he reiterated it yesterday.
“Of course I want to play. In my mind, I wanted to play more than just one more season”, he told reporters, via the team’s website. “I just gotta get healthy first. We talk about coming back from injury. I was told it was a 12-week process. We came back in six weeks. I fought the doctors every week”.
Asked what he expected the offseason to be like for him, he had only one focus. “Getting healthy”, he said. “No darkness retreats. Just getting healthy, getting stronger. I was dealing with this [since] the first day of training camp. I’m just looking to get back on the right foot and get back to having fun”.
The darkness retreat reference was of course a playful shot at New York Jets QB Aaron Rodgers, who went on a “darkness retreat” this past offseason while purportedly reflecting on his future and whether he wanted to continue to play. That was while he was trying to coax the Green Bay Packers to complete a trade and get out of Dodge.
Heyward’s decision to make that reference wasn’t just humorous or incidental. He had a point, which is this: there’s nothing he needs to think about; he wants to play. No soul-searching is required. He needs no spiritual healing, just physical.
Outside of the 2016 season, this past year was the most physically grueling he’s ever endured. In the same media session, he detailed how his groin injury that ultimately required surgery and landed him on the Reserve/Injured List for most of the first half of the season began at the outset of training camp.
“I just wanted to put my hand in that pile, but the flip side of that is I put my body through a lot of pain this year”, he said, noting that he brought a 12-week recovery timeline down to six. “I can’t be doing that year in and year out”.
Of course he can’t, certainly not as he approaches his 35th birthday. Yet he’s not far removed from arguably the best season of his career in 2022. His numbers were way, way down this past year, but he probably never played a healthy snap. In 11 games, he finished with 33 tackles, six tackles for loss, two sacks, and one batted pass. The spirit is willing, they say, but the flesh is weak.
