APRIL 23: Jones-Drew will be in Jacksonville next Tuesday to officially retire as a member of the Jaguars, tweets Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union.
MARCH 5: Maurice Jones-Drew will not return to the Raiders or any other NFL team for the 2015 season. The veteran running back confirmed today (via Twitter) that he has decided to end his playing career, announcing his retirement.
“After much discussion with my family and business team during this offseason, I’ve decided to retire from the National Football League,” Drew wrote in his statement. “Football has been a central part of my life for the past 24 years. But, now I’m excited about and looking forward to the next chapter of my life.”
Although he played his final year in Oakland, most of Jones-Drew’s nine-year career was spent in Jacksonville with the Jaguars, and he’ll leave the game as the franchise’s second-leading rusher, behind Fred Taylor. While he didn’t mention the possibility in his statement today, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the 29-year-old signed a one-day contract with the team to formally retire as a Jaguar.
In 126 total regular season games, MJD racked up 8,167 rushing yards to go along with another 2,944 yards through the air — he finishes with a very neat 11,111 yards from scrimmage for his career. Jones-Drew’s best season came in 2011, when he was named to the NFL’s All-Pro First Team after leading the league with 1,606 rushing yards.
Although the Raiders signed Jones-Drew to a three-year, $7.5MM contract last March, the odds were slim that the team would have brought him back for the 2015 season, considering he had a $2.5MM cap hit and no dead money let on his contract. Already armed with well over $50MM in cap room, the team will create a little flexibility by removing MJD from its books.
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