22416-roberto-ruizWhy Sean Richardson Should Not Play

Green Bay Packers safety Sean Richardson told Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he will play football again. Sean says that he is healthy and he is dedicated to playing football again after having his C4, C5, and C6 vertebrae fused. Richardson had already had his C5 and C6 vertebrae fused together in 2012 after he had a herniated cervical disk in his neck during his rookie season. Never before has a player been medically cleared to play football after having three vertebrae fused, but Richardson is convinced that he will be the first.

I truly hope not, and I beg Richardson to reconsider. Sean is 26 years old and has a son of his own, his main objective should not be to get back on the playing field. This isn’t a finger, or a foot, or even a leg, this is his neck. Ask Jermichael Finley how serious a neck injury is. Ask Nick Collins if a neck injury should be taken lightly. Player after player after player insists that they are healthy and will someday be allowed to play football again. But nobody ever lets them. No team wants to be the team that signed the medical pariah and let him lose his livelihood on their football field. No doctor wants to watch every football game holding his/her breath whenever a player lowers his head.

Richardson might want to play football again, but he shouldn’t. There is life after football, no matter how hard that is to see for some players. Having grown up playing football every week of his life, from pee-wee to the professionals. It must be incredibly terrifying and frustrating to spend your whole life preparing to play football for a dozen years and setting you and your family up for life, only to have it ripped away from you before you ever earn that huge paycheck. Sure, Richardson has made more money than most of us will ever see, but we all know that he expected much, much more. So now Richardson is fighting back. He doesn’t want to let go of the dream that he has fought his whole life for. But it is time to let go.

Taking a coaching job at the highest level he can find would be the best way for Richardson to stick around the game that he loves and still make a paycheck. The Packers have been known to offer coaching positions to former players whose career has been robbed from them. Coaching is not something that any player wants to be pushed into, but it is a viable option for a former player who is not ready to leave the game.

I am not going to pretend to know Sean Richardson from any other third-safety that has made a cameo on the Packers squad, but I do hope that he takes a step back and looks at this from a logical standpoint. Don’t ruin your life, Sean. The game isn’t worth it. Your life is.