INDIANAPOLIS — Ryan Clark said Wednesday that he is retiring from the NFL, drawing to a close a 13-year career that ended this past season with the Washington Redskins.
Clark, a free safety, said the decision had been weighing on his mind for some time, but it wasn’t until recently that he was confident he was done playing football. He will become a full-time football analyst for ESPN — a role he has held during the offseason for the past two years.
“I went away to the Bahamas for the weekend and came to the conclusion that this is what I want to do,” Clark said Wednesday at Lucas Oil Stadium, where he was part of ESPN’s coverage of the NFL combine. “I had been working and talking to ESPN about if this does happen, where do we go from there? I felt like it was the right decision, it was the right time.”
An undrafted free agent out of LSU in 2002, Clark spent his first two seasons with the New York Giants before playing the next two for the Redskins. He achieved his greatest success with the Pittsburgh Steelers, making two trips to the Super Bowl — and winning it following the 2008 season — and being selected to play in the Pro Bowl after the 2011 season.
Clark returned to the Redskins last season, when he started all but one game and made 102 tackles with one interception. The choice to return to Washington was a farewell tour of sorts for Clark, who knew he’d play only one more season if it could be for the Redskins or the New Orleans Saints — the team closest to his home.
“I can be honest and say, I remember going into [the 2013 season], I never thought about retirement, so I know that once I wasn’t with the Steelers anymore, retirement wasn’t an option,” Clark said. “This year was different. This year I understood I’m on a one-year deal, and that was purposely to give myself this opportunity to think about, ’Do I want to come back for another year?’”
Filling more of a mentorship, stopgap role with the Redskins this past season, Clark had 15 tackles in a victory over the Philadelphia Eagles on Dec. 20. That was enough to convince him that even though he was not able to play up to the level he once did, he could still play football well enough to be successful.
“I’m good with it, man,” Clark said. “I’ll just be a regular dude now … and just enjoy life in the background.”
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