Lions center Frank Ragnow
Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
It’s no secret playing football for a living takes a toll on your body, and there have been a number of players who seemingly had plenty of seasons left in the tank who’ve unexpectedly retired in recent years—a list that has now grown after Lions center Frank Ragnow made the fairly surprising decision to hang up his cleats just a less than a month after his 29th birthday.
In 2019, Andrew Luck blindsided the Colts and basically every NFL fan when he announced he was retiring at the age of 29 just a couple of weeks before he was supposed to kick off what would have been his eighth season in Indianapolis (although he missed the entirety of his second-to-last one with the shoulder issue that contributed to his decision).
Luck cited the injuries he was struggling to recover from while explaining that decision, and after that season wrapped up, Panthers linebacker Luke Kuechly pointed to the concussions he’d suffered during his career to justify his decision to walk away from football at the age of 28 after eight seasons in Carolina.
Those moves weren’t necessarily unprecedented. Barry Sanders, Jim Brown, and Terrell Davis are among some notable names who called it quits despite appearing to have more than a few good years ahead of them, and the same could be said for Aaron Donald when he revealed he was going the same route last year.
That brings us to Frank Ragnow, the Lions center who was named to the Pro Bowl four times in the past five seasons and also racked up three second-team All-Pro selections over that span while starting all 96 of the games he appeared in during a seven-year NFL career he kicked off with Detroit in 2018.
Ragnow has been absent from the team’s voluntary workouts, and there was plenty of speculation that the man who made close to $60 million since entering the league was waiting for the franchise to rework his contract before reporting.
However, it turns out that was not the case when you consider Ragnow (who turned 29 on May 17th) revealed he has opted to retire in an Instagram post where he said “I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m feeling good but I’m not and it’s time to prioritize my health and my families future.”
In 2024, Lions fans rallied around Ragnow after learning he played through an almost comical number of injuries in a playoff game, and this is just the latest sobering reminder of how taxing an NFL career tends to be.