‘Why now?' will follow Chris Borland after abrupt retirement from football
It wasn’t just his age that was so remarkable about Chris Borland’s decision to leave pro football. Others have called it a career at 24, or younger.
It wasn’t just his concern about concussions; everyone in football has those fears.
It was also the timing of the announcement: at a zenith in his profession that extremely few reach. Borland — an undersized linebacker — went through high school and college football and got to an NFL team. He endured the difficulty of a rookie season and all the acclimation it requires. He worked his way to a possible starting spot with the 49ers. He lived the dream.
And that’s when he decided to walk away.
“Coming from the excitement of making it to the big show, you finally play that first year, and then you retire,” said former New Orleans Saints defensive back Jabari Greer. “My question would be, ‘Why now?’ Why when it’s all starting to pay off?”
This isn’t a derisive question. Greer himself retired late last year from injuries at age 32, and he says he fully understands the root of Borland’s concerns about safety and the “multiple car wrecks” that happen each Sunday.
“If you play one game in the NFL,” he said, “you know.”
But now Borland will be known as the player who walked away from his career at its pinnacle, and so the “Why now?” question will be asked wherever he goes. That can either be a blessing or a burden.
“When you retire from football, you deal with other people’s misperceptions,” Greer said. “Why did you give up something that we, as regular fans, would never give up?”
This is something former Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall anticipated last year when he retired from football at age 26.
“’Why would you stop now?'" Mendenhall wrote at the time. "'You're only 26 years old! You're just going to walk away from millions of dollars? Is your knee fully healed? You had a pretty good year last year,’ etc. After the initial shock response and realization that I'm not kidding, the question that would continue to arise is: Why?"
Mendenhall wrote, “I truly don’t think me walking away is a big of a deal.” But he realized what he thinks and what everyone else thinks is never going to mesh completely.
This is true for Borland as well. People will not be talking to the new Chris Borland (the person he’s becoming) but the old Chris Borland (the player who was frozen at the moment of this decision).
“Chris Borland the football player is a ghost,” Greer said. “They’ll be speaking to Chris Borland the football player, who has passed away in a sense.”
That was one of the greatest challenges for Greer himself, who had to reckon with his own “ghost” while also trying to figure out who he was post-football. He is still rehabbing from the ACL tear that ended his career early in 2014, but he has also wrestled with the “Who am I?” question that faces every retiree and will face Borland.
“I thought I was the family guy in the locker room,” he said. “I thought I was the spiritual guy. I learned I had to invest a lot more in my wife, and invest a lot more in my children.”
It’s been a gratifying transition for Greer. But Borland is far younger. At 24, he's young enough to be coming out of college. He is still starting his life-building years. So he has an identity emerging now and an identity to create. As Mendenhall wrote in a recent tweet, “As I change, I realize more and more that I am only becoming myself.” That may feel isolating, but it could also feel quite gratifying considering how many will come to him for advice and perspective.
“It’s an opportunity to make a difference,” Greer said. “To make a change.”
In that sense, Borland has gone from the top of the NFL world to the top of a world he’s created. That’s a perch with real power.
