Ryan Fitzpatrick is calling it a career.
The longtime veteran will reportedly hang up his cleats following 17 seasons in the NFL. In nearly two decades he went from seventh-round draft pick to a starting quarterback for a league-record nine different teams (Josh McCown, a worthy rival in the journeyman rankings, played for nine teams in his long career but only started for six of them). He made a little more than $82 million working on Sundays.
Fitzpatrick’s legacy is that he was rarely great, but mostly “good enough.” He was a useful enough stopgap option and leader that teams could turn to him to guide them through rebuilds. He served as a bridge that led to revivals in Cincinnati, Tampa, and Houston, yet didn’t play for a single team that qualified for the postseason in his entire 17-year career.
But Fitzpatrick did his best to turn chicken … stuff … into chicken salad. He had a big arm, saw the field well and was generally embraced by fans. His overall legacy will be as the Great Value version of Jay Cutler, only if people preferred the generic offering considerably over its name-brand counterpart.
Let’s take a look back at Fitzpatrick’s journey from Harvard signal caller to NFL veteran, starting with his time as a rookie with the St. Louis Rams all the way to his finale in Washington: