Former Vikings linebacker Anthony Barr enters NFL retirement with gratitude for Minnesota

Before each of his 107 games for the Vikings, linebacker Anthony Barr had a predictable pregame ritual. It started before his first NFL game as a 2014 first-round pick out of UCLA.

Barr, who recently retired from the NFL after 10 seasons, would vomit into towels laid on the ground. He did so in the locker room or from the bench on the sideline. During the famed 2017 season — when the Vikings had the NFL’s No. 1 defense and eventually executed the Minneapolis Miracle — they were in London facing the Browns when teammate and best friend Eric Kendricks ran into the locker room after warmups.

“I’m sweaty, so I grab a towel off the ground, and I just wipe my face from top to bottom — completely get covered with orange peel,“ Kendricks said. ”I smell like citrusy — realize I had just used his towel from his pregame routine. That’s just a little story to show how close we are.”

Kendricks was among Barr’s teammates, including former safety Andrew Sendejo and linebacker Audie Cole, gathered at the Vikings’ Eagan headquarters on Monday to celebrate Barr — the hard-hitting defender who made four Pro Bowls as the first draft pick under former head coach Mike Zimmer.

Kendricks, who first roomed with Barr as UCLA linebackers before being drafted by the Vikings a year after him, introduced Barr at the lectern with the vomiting story that required further explanation.

“It was routine,” Barr, 33, said. “It was weird, because people would start like gathering around and knew it was time. [Harrison Smith] would get real close and I’d be like, ‘Bro, you’re like in the splash zone.’ If you know him, he’s weirdly strange and odd. It kind of makes sense.”

Barr shared Kendricks’ pregame routine from when he first came into the league in 2015 and 2016, when fellow linebacker Edmond Robinson was on the team.

Barr’s decorated NFL career, including nine seasons in Minnesota, started as a running back at UCLA. He was on offense for two years before asking to switch to linebacker. The 6-5 bulldozer quickly ascended into an impactful defender who delivered punishing hits that prominently injured two quarterbacks: USC’s Matt Barkley in 2012 and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers in 2017.

Barr, a three-time team captain and a Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee for the Vikings, recalled showing up to his pre-draft visit at the team’s old Eden Prairie headquarters wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

It was snowing in April.

“Hopefully we don’t come here,” Barr, who grew up in Los Angeles, recalled thinking, “because I’m not trying to be in the snow in April. Six weeks later, they called.”

“But it ended up working out,” he added. “I actually like the snow more than I do the heat, so that’s kind of a change being a Cali boy.”

Barr was Zimmer’s first draft pick and wise beyond his football years when he walked into the door as a 22-year-old rookie. Barr recalled Zimmer empowering him with responsibilities on and off the field. He was eventually part of the team’s leadership council, a group of players that Zimmer called upon when needing to test the temperature of the locker room.

“He entrusted me with communicating to the team,” Barr said. “Some things he didn’t feel comfortable saying, or if there was maybe a disconnect.”

Barr said he grew close to Minnesota, where he says his Raise The Barr Foundation will remain active in helping single-parent households with financial issues.

On the field, his most memorable game came in Green Bay at the end of the 2015 season. The Vikings won 20-13, clinching the NFC North in his second season.

“The last-second Rodgers Hail Mary,” Barr said, “where the clock expired but they obviously got it off because that’s kind of how they operate up there. … Very memorable game. It was fun, it was cold, against our division rivals up at their place to knock them off for the division title.”

In 2023, when Barr was a free agent looking for work, he revealed on Monday that he was being fitted for a helmet in Philadelphia and about to sign a contract with the Eagles when the Vikings came calling.

Barr said he told Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman “plot twist, I’m actually about to head out. Thanks for everything.’”

“It just made sense at the time, and it still does,” said Barr, who hasn’t played since 2023. “I’m a Viking. I feel that in my heart, in my core.”