Demarco Murray announced his retirement from the NFL after playing seven seasons in the league. Murray, 30, made the announcement on ESPN’s NFL Live.
Murray was selected with the 71st overall pick in the third round of the 2011 NFL Draft out of Oklahoma by the Dallas Cowboys where he spent the first four seasons of his career with the franchise. During that time, he rose to stardom as one of the league’s most productive running backs that topped by his breakout 2014 campaign where he led the NFL with a career-best 1,845 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns.
This saw him break Hall of Famer Jim Brown’s record four most consecutive 100-yard games with eight to begin that season. Murray also set the franchise single-season rushing mark with 12 games posting 100 or more yards and passed Walt Garrison for seventh all-time on the team’s rushing yards list. It helped him earn his second of three career Pro Bowl nods and won NFL Offensive Player of the Year.
He signed with the Eagles as a free agent during the 2015 offseason on a five-year, $40 million contract. The Eagles traded him to the Titans in 2016, and Murray was productive that season, with 1,287 yards and nine touchdowns.
Last year was a down year for Murray, whose 659 rushing yards were a career low. He just turned 30 in February, and he’s been rehabbing a torn MCL that he suffered at the end of the 2017 season.
There’s a wall that hits 30-year-old running backs especially hard. Murray saw his productivity decline significantly last season and figured now is the right time to call it a career and there is nothing wrong with that.
