DeAndre Hopkins reveals 1 condition that will force him to retire
DeAndre Hopkins is playing the free agency waiting game right now. With some spare time on his hands, the wide receiver took to Threads — Meta’s new Twitter-esque social media platform — to discuss his future retirement and why it isn’t coming anytime soon.
Hopkins’ lone condition? Dipping below a thousand receiving yards per season.
“I’ll retire from football when I’m not a 1k-yard receiver,” Hopkins said on Threads. “With that said, I was on pace for 1,400 yards last year—one significant injury in 11 years. I might be playing till I’m 37 the way I feel.”
DeAndre Hopkins says he will retire from football when he is not a 1000 yard receiver pic.twitter.com/DhlOqCP8cX
— NFL Rumors (@nflrums) July 6, 2023
Hopkins only managed to play in nine games last season for the Arizona Cardinals after missing the first six due to violating the NFL’s performance-enhancing drug policy. He tallied 717 receiving yards in the games he did play, which if extrapolated to a full 17-game season would mean he’d pull down 1,354 yards.
The 5-time Pro Bowl receiver was actually in a more precarious position in 2021 when he had just 572 yards through Week 14 before a knee injury wiped out his season. He would have needed to tally 107 yards in each of the last four games to breach the self-made threshold.
To his credit, Hopkins has averaged well over a thousand receiving yards per season — 1,129 to be exact — throughout his 10-year career thus far. While it’s conceivable that he manages to effectively play until his age-37 campaign, it likely won’t be as a WR1 posting a thousand-yard season.
Cardinals icon Larry Fitzgerald was 37 during his 17th and final NFL season, wherein he produced a career-low 409 receiving yards. 34-year-old Julio Jones has seen a steep decline every season since he led the NFL in receiving yards back in 2018. Jones finished with a career-low 299 yards across six games for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last season.
Before Hopkins has to worry about staving off retirement with another 1,000-yard season, figuring out what team he’ll play for next season should probably be higher up on the priority list.