Close the books. It's over. It's official. After 13 seasons, Brian Urlacher has retired. Called it quits. Hung it up. He did so this morning, releasing a statement through his Twitter account. Here it is:
Brian UrlacherNFL Playermore from Brian Urlacher »
And so that's that, folks. There will be no Brian Urlacher sightings at Winter Park. He will not wear purple.
Urlacher never made much sense as the Vikings' 2013 option at middle linebacker. Sure, there were rumors early on in free agency that the Vikings were keeping a pulse on Urlacher's situation. Yet when the star linebacker's negotiations with Chicago, where he was a standout starter since 2000, fell through, the Vikings didn't exactly hold a party to pool funds together in a hurried effort to sign him.
We tried to tell you the reasons why. Urlacher will turn 35 this coming Saturday. He missed the final four games of 2012 with a hamstring problem. His burst and explosion isn't what it once was. And, at best, he would have been a one-season Band-Aid on the position for the Vikings, who are far more determined these days to seek out long-term answers, looking to identify and develop quality players as opposed to pulling old ones off the free agency scrap heap.
So, yeah. Even with the Vikings' holes at the position, we never took the Urlacher chatter very seriously.
Still, that didn't stop the "Urlacher could soon be a Viking" rumors from swirling off and on for more than two months.
And last week, when a Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist cited an anonymous source close to Urlacher saying that the linebacker might soon be a Viking, reckless bloggers ran wild with the unsubstantiated rumor. (Why wouldn't they? In today's world of journalism -- especially in the NFL -- sexy headlines and Web clicks have begun to take on far greater value than, well, ya know, actual truth.)