Ryan Fitzpatrick said he isn’t mad that one of his favorite former teammates blew the surprise of his retirement announcement.
The former quarterback of the Buffalo Bills — along with eight other NFL teams — announced this week that he was hanging up the cleats after a 17-year career. Fitzpatrick had plenty of good memories to share about his time in Buffalo including some love for his former teammates, even the one who prematurely told the world that Fitzpatrick was retiring.
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Blown Announcement
Speaking to MMQB’s Albert Breer, Fitzpatrick explained that he and his oldest son created a word cloud with the names of former teammates so that Fitzpatrick could send it to them personally as a thank-you before publicly announcing his retirement. When the text arrived in the inbox of Fred Jackson, the former Bills running back posted it on Twitter and shared his appreciation for Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick said Jackson didn’t realize that he had upstaged the retirement announcement, and reached out to apologize.
“I just told him, ‘No worries,’” Fitzpatrick said. “If you look at that list, I mean Fred Jackson is the biggest font, and that is purposeful because he is and always will be my favorite teammate of all time.”
The word cloud that Fitzpatrick and his son created had the names of hundreds of teammates from his nine stops in the NFL, and the former Bills quarterback said all of the relationships were special to him.
“My son and I put all those names on there and tried to put everybody I ever played with, and I’m sure we missed a few,” he said. “We tried our best. But the size of the name—everybody on there means something to me—but the biggest guys are the ones that had an enormous impact on me as a player and a human being. I wanted to make sure they saw and could feel my appreciation for what they did for me.”
Fitzpatrick Shares Love for Bills Fans
After announcing his retirement, Fitzpatrick looked back fondly on his four seasons with the Bills. It was his first chance to compete for a starting job after spending time with the St. Louis Rams and Cincinnati Bengals, and Fitzpatrick seized the opportunity. He gained a reputation as a gunslinging quarterback, beloved by Bills fans for his passion and for engineering one of the team’s most memorable wins during the 17-year playoff drought, a last-second victory over the New England Patriots in 2011.
Appearing on a podcast with ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Fitzpatrick said he will always feel a strong connection to Bills fans. He famously joined those fans during January’s wild-card playoff round, watching in single-digit temperatures — and even taking off his shirt — as the Bills dismantled the Patriots.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more at home in a stadium or with a fan base than — and I was in Buffalo for four years,” he said. “But those are my people. I feel like I understand them and they understand me. It was one of the great pleasures of my career playing there in Buffalo.”
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