{"id":218,"date":"2012-01-23T14:15:48","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T19:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/?p=218"},"modified":"2012-01-23T14:17:54","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T19:17:54","slug":"could-i-still-play-in-the-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/2012\/01\/23\/could-i-still-play-in-the-nfl\/","title":{"rendered":"Could I still play in the NFL?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I rapidly approach the statistical midpoint of my life expectancy I was curious if I could still go through a mid-life-crisis and try out for an NFL team. Realistic? Of course! Why, a player a week older than myself led the league in tackles this year!<\/p>\n<p>For posterity, here&#8217;s the list of all NFL players older than me as of the end of the 2011 season:<br \/>\nRay Lewis (LB, Baltimore) &#8211; by 9 days!<br \/>\nPhil Dawson (Kicker, Browns)<br \/>\nBrad Maynard (Punter, Browns)<br \/>\nCharlie Batch (QB, Pitt)<br \/>\nJames Farrior (LB, Pitt)<br \/>\nPatrick Mannelly (Safety, Bears)<br \/>\nBen Graham (Punter, Lions)<br \/>\nJason Hanson (Kicker, Lions)<br \/>\nDonald Driver (WR, GB)<br \/>\nRyan Longwell (Kicker, Minn)<br \/>\nJake Delhomme (QB, Texans)<br \/>\nJeff Garcia (QB, Texans)<br \/>\nKerry Collins (QB, Colts)<br \/>\nAdam Vinatieri (Kicker, Colts)<br \/>\nOrlindo Mare (Kicker, Carolina)<br \/>\nRonde Barber (CB, TB)<br \/>\nJason Taylor (LB, Miami)<br \/>\nMark Brunell (QB, Jets)<br \/>\nJon Kitna (QB, Dallas)<br \/>\nLondon Fletcher (LB, Washington) &#8211; One week older!<br \/>\nSav Rocca (Punter, Washington)<br \/>\nDavid Binn (Safety, Denver)<br \/>\nBrian Dawkins (Safety, Denver)<br \/>\nCasy Weigmann (Center, KC)<br \/>\nDavid Akers (Kicker, SF)<br \/>\nAl Harris (CB, Seattle)<\/p>\n<p>The majority are kickers, punters and backup &#8220;mentor&#8221; quarterbacks. I&#8217;m sure a handful will retire each year. When the last one does I&#8217;ll probably have to admit that I&#8217;m probably going to have to give up on that dream of scoring the winning touchdown in the superbowl. But not yet!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Am I too old to play in the NFL? The stats say NO! Go for it! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ericles.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}