2nd Blog

QB Daunte Culpepper has decided to retire. Tha once on top QB, who fell due to a knee injury, has decided to retire. He summed his words up with “Farewell NFL.”

Culpepper said he just is getting tired of fighting for another opportunity. Which is very understandable if you look at his career. Since his knee injury he has struggled greatly. Which is a shame, because at full health, Daunte is an amazing QB.

He was a star on tha Vikings, but that was before his knee injury in October 2005. He is now 31. He was a 1st round pick in 1999 to tha Vikings. Just one year later he became tha starter. He had a great wide out to toss to in Randy Moss and tha pair blew up. He has never touched that level of play since his injury.

“When free agency began this year, I had a new sense of excitement about continuing to rebuild my career in the same way that I had rebuilt my knee after my catastrophic injury in 2005,” Culpepper said. “Unfortunately, what I found out was that the league did not share any of the optimism about me as an unrestricted free agent that I expected. In fact, there was an overwhelming sense that there was no room for me among this year’s group of quarterbacks.”

Tha Miami Doplhins got Daunte in ‘06 in exchange for a 2nd round pick. He only played 5 games before getting replaced due to knee issues. He was sacked an amazing 21 times in those 4 games!! Which you can not blame fully on him, you have to look at tha offensive line and question their play. Everybody remembers his time with tha Dolphins with tha thoughts of being sacked 7 times in his first home game. In that game he was booed by halftime. And walkin off tha field during minicamp in June ‘07 because tha Dolphins would not let him play. Bad images of that time..

Last season Daunte was with tha Oakland Raiders where he made 5 starts, with 5 TD games. I personally thought he did ok in Oakland, they needed a QB and had a decent one that just needed work with tha wide outs. Over tha past few months Daunte has tried to get anything he could. He even offered to be Aaron Rodgers backup on tha Packers, which they should accept. That would equal experiance and talent just incase Rodgers has trouble. That could help Aaron, he had Favre help for so long, then Culpepper, that would be great for him.

But no teams wanted him so he has decided to leave tha NFL. “Since I was not given a fair chance to come in and compete for a job, I would rather move on and win in other arenas of life,” Culpepper said. I greatly agree, he has got no fair chances and been treated like a bad QB. He was once where today’s top QB’s were, but one injury made everyone forget him, which is sad.

He had a 9 year career, completing 64% of his passes and total of 142 TD’s. He went to college at Central Flordia, he was a 3 time Pro Bowl QB. Many say his best year was in 2004, where he got his career highs; Yards-4,717, TD’s-39, & Passer Rating-110.9

Its sad to see a once great career that had many hard times, come to an end. Daunte is and always will be a great QB, who just didn’t get enough chances like he deserved. I hope tha best for him in whatever he moves on to..

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