Former Tennessee Titans WR Rishard Matthews retires
By Will Lomas
Former Tennessee Titans WR1 Rishard Matthews retired today.
Heading into 2018 the Tennessee Titans thought that Rishard Matthews would be the perfect pair to Corey Davis.
Less than a year later, Matthews announced that he has retired from football.
Man, talk about a fall from grace from 2016-2017, the Tennessee Titans WR1 was Rishard Matthews who was finally getting his due as a starting receiver in the NFL after toiling away with the Miami Dolphins for year.
During that stretch he had 1,740 yards and 13 TDs and looked well on his way to being one of the best receivers that the Titans had ever signed or drafted.
With Corey Davis coming off of a great playoff game against the New England Patriots, it looked like the stars were aligning for the duo to come into the 2018 season as one of the better WR tandems in the NFL.
However, just a few weeks into the season Rishard Matthews quit. Just decided he didn’t want to play football for the Tennessee Titans anymore.
This move tarnished his legacy with the one franchise where he really could have been a hero, seen as the Nate Washington of the Jon Robinson era. Instead, he ruined that and left the team high and dry coming off of the Delanie Walker injury.
In an all-time “kick someone while they are down” moment, when he quit the Titans had lost all three of their leading pass catchers from last year (Eric Decker was the other) after losing that terrible game in Miami.
It was truly depressing to any fan, and when he could have been “the guy” he decided to walk away.
He bounced around the NFL and ended up with the New Orleans Saints this year only to walk away again and retire.
The NFL fans that remember him will think of his career as what could have been. Maybe he will return someday, but it is hard to imagine teams lining up to sign a guy that decided to walk away in August and September in back to back years.