After Chad Pennington tore his ACL in March, he decided to spend 2011 working for FOX Sports, and take a year off from the NFL. But that doesn’t mean Pennington is done playing football for good.
Pennington told Todd Wright on Sporting News Radio that a year in the booth will give him the time to get healthy and then decide whether he wants to focus on football or television next year.
“It’s just being able to take a step back and take some time to heal, get healthy and then make a good business decision for me and my family in 2012,” Pennington said.
At the start of the lockout, Pennington was rehabbing a shoulder injury and expecting to play this season. Tearing his ACL changed that, and he referred to the 2011 season as an opportunity to test the waters in television and see if it will work for him as a post-football career.
“This is a way for me to try something new to see if I like it,” Pennington said. “It’s hard enough to come back from a fourth shoulder surgery -- much less when you don’t have a strong foundation because you’re coming back from an ACL surgery. So it really had to do with the knee injury.”
If rehab on his knee and shoulder goes well, the 35-year-old Pennington wouldn’t mind playing in 2012. But it’s easy to picture him deciding that staying healthy and staying in the booth is the right choice for him going forward.