After playing 16 NFL seasons with five different teams, making two Pro Bowls and passing for more than 40,000 yards, Kerry Collins says he’s sure he made the right decision to retire.
“I am really at peace with my career,” Collins told a group of reporters today, per Jim Wyatt of the Tennessean. “I didn’t win a Super Bowl and that is going to be one of the things that bugs me, I know it will. But when I sit here and look back at the age of 38, I played 16 years and I had kind of a rough start but I am proud of the way I came back from that and the things I accomplished over the years. There will be parts of it that I will miss, but I don’t think I’ll ever regret the decision I made.”
Speaking publicly about his decision to retire for the first time, Collins said he knows he let people down in Carolina, where his off-field problems resulted in him getting the boot three and a half years after he became the face of the franchise and the fifth overall pick in the 1995 NFL draft. But he said he worked hard to turn his career around after that.
“In Carolina I made my mistakes and didn’t act like an NFL quarterback needed to act,” Collins said. “But since then I have, and I have always taken the approach, ‘I am going to do it the best way I can.’ . . . I did the best I could at each and every place that I was at and that is why I look back and I am proud I lasted this long. It is not an easy thing to do.”
Collins said he’ll probably get antsy on Sunday afternoons in the fall, but he knows he doesn’t have it in him to go through another training camp.
“I know what it takes to prepare for a season,” Collins said, “and my commitment to do that is just not there any more.”