For years, Andrew Whitworth told Bengals teammates he would retire. He insisted, every fall, starting around 2011. This is the year, he’d say, I think this is the last one, before inevitably returning for another season—and another season after that, and another season after that. He’s 40 now, the second-oldest nonspecialist in the NFL this season, after that Brady fellow. He’s older, wiser and grayer. He’s closer (maybe, must be) to the end.
With wisdom came perspective, and a cosmic tie that could help him fashion the perfect Hollywood ending, should Whitworth win one more football game and decide to actually stop playing in the coming weeks. Even now, he still can’t say for sure. Instead, he’s grateful for the understanding borne from a changed perspective. He’s looking back now at 2017 specifically, when, after 11 seasons as a Bengal had netted zero playoff victories, he needed change. It started with a flight, an acceptance, a voicemail and the eventual realization that one assumption he made that fateful spring had been both terribly and gloriously wrong.
Whitworth owes his 16th season—and, by extension, his second Super Bowl appearance—to that spring and the sequence that unfolded. He had always expected to retire as a Bengal until he didn’t. His exit wasn’t messy; that’s not his style. But there was frustration. There were hard feelings. He tried to forget all that on his free-agent visit to Los Angeles that March.
