The two-time Pro Bowl cornerback departed during the Bills’ loss to the Chargers, citing his health in a retirement statement. One teammate called the move “completely disrespectful.”
The Buffalo Bills are bad. Some say very, very bad.
And on Sunday, as the team was once again getting blasted — the Bills were down by 28-6 at halftime — one of its most decorated players decided he no longer wanted to play.
In a puzzling and highly unusual move, cornerback Vontae Davis, a former first-round pick and two-time Pro Bowler, “pulled himself out of the game,” according to Coach Sean McDermott. “He communicated to us that he was done,” McDermott added when asked to clarify that Davis, who had made one tackle, was not injured.
As it turned out, Davis did more than just skip out on the second half. He retired from the N.F.L. altogether.
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Davis, 30, made no allusion to the Bills’ early-season struggles in a statement he posted on Instagram, pointing instead to health concerns.
“This isn’t how I pictured retiring from the N.F.L.,” he said. But after several injuries and multiple operations over his 10-year career, he said, “Today on the field, reality hit me fast and hard: I shouldn’t be out there anymore.”
Before Davis’s announcement, one of his teammates, linebacker Lorenzo Alexander, publicly criticized him for “quitting on us in the middle of the game.”
“Never have seen it ever — Pop Warner, high school, college, pros,” Alexander told reporters. “It’s just completely disrespectful to his teammates.”
Davis, who signed a one-year, $5 million contract with Buffalo in February after spending seasons with the Miami Dolphins and the Indianapolis Colts, said he meant “no disrespect” to his teammates and coaches and called the decision to retire “overwhelming.”
“I had an honest moment with myself,” he said, adding that he also wondered, “Do I want to keep sacrificing?”
He continued, “Truthfully, I do not because the season is long, and it’s more important to me and my family to walk away healthy than to willfully embrace the warrior mentality and limp away too late.”
After playing all but 13 games in his first eight seasons, Davis missed 11 last year because of a lingering groin injury. He had at least three concussions in his N.F.L. career, along with a broken wrist and hamstring and knee and foot sprains. Davis was healthy but inactive in Week 1 — a 47-3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
In recent years, as more information has emerged about the connection between repeated blows to the head and the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, some players have chosen to retire despite remaining productive on the field.
The San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland retired in 2015 after a successful rookie season, saying, “From what I’ve researched and what I’ve experienced, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.” The Baltimore Ravens guard John Urschel accepted that risk for three seasons before retiring at 26 to pursue a career in high-level mathematics .
Players have also occasionally decided to leave the field abruptly.
In 2013, wide receiver Dez Bryant walked to the locker room with 1:21 remaining and his Dallas Cowboys trailing by 1 point. They lost after leading the Green Bay Packers by 23 at halftime, and Bryant later wrote on Twitter that he had left the game because he was emotional. “It had nothing to do with my teammates,” he said.
The Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss was also criticized in 2005 for walking off the field while his team, the Minnesota Vikings, attempted an onside kick with two seconds remaining in its final regular-season game. Moss was traded one month later.
Still, Davis’s decision to leave the field and retire while his struggling team was still playing — the Bills lost to the Los Angeles Chargers, 31-20 — was rather extraordinary. Before Davis explained the health concerns behind his retirement, some people began sharing a tweet he had sent in 2013.
“The people who Succeed in life,” he wrote, “are those who don’t QUIT.”
