Coatesville High School graduate Derrick Morgan, who spent his nine-year career in the NFL with the Tennessee Titans, announced his retirement from football in a heartfelt essay for The Players’ Tribune.
Morgan started playing football when he was nine years old, but it did not become his main focus until late in high school.
“When I was growing up in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, my mom never talked about college,” wrote Morgan. “It was all about finishing high school. The plan was for me to get good grades, graduate … then get a job and go to work. That’s what she’d done. It’s what her parents had done. It’s what most people in our neighborhood did. That was the model.”
However, once he started earning recognition on the football field, his priorities changed. He started working toward playing college football, and then focused all of his energy on the NFL. This led to him being drafted in the first round by the Titans in 2010.
An ACL injury during his rookie year, although devastating at first, provided him with the chance to discover who he was outside of football.
Now, nearly a decade later, he has decided to hang up his cleats and devote more time to his family and other ventures, such as investing.
Read more about Derrick Morgan in The Player’s Tribune here.
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