3<\/p>\n John Urschel played three seasons in the NFL between 2014-16 before retiring to pursue mathCredit: Getty<\/p>\n Coming out of Penn State, Urschel was selected by the Ravens in the fifth round with the 175th overall pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n He wound up playing his rookie season at guard, before moving to center in his second season.\u00a0<\/p>\n Urschel revered back to the guard position in his third — and final — year.\u00a0<\/p>\n In total, he played 40 career games during the regular season, and two in the postseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 313lb guard registered 1035 snaps on offense, and 223 on special teams.<\/p>\n Ahead of the 2017 campaign, there was some expectation that Urschel would become the starting center for the Ravens.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, he had already come to the decision that football was no longer in his future.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just hours before Baltimore\u2019s first training camp practice, Urschel dialled head coach John Harbaugh to inform him of his decision to retire.\u00a0<\/p>\n He was just 26-years-old, and arguably only just entering his prime playing years.\u00a0<\/p>\n The timing of his retirement announcement was an interesting one as it came just two days after the results of a thorough study<\/a> exploring the relationship between playing football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was released by The New York Times. <\/p>\n However, Urschel made the admission that his decision was far more \u201ccasual\u201d, and that it had a lot more to do with his family, with him and his fiancee at the time expecting a child, and his desire to step back into education.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although he did admit that he paid attention to the findings of the study, where 110 of 111 NFL players\u2019 brains that were studied were found to be damaged.<\/p>\n “It was not that this new evidence was extremely overwhelming to change my opinion. It’s more like this really brings something to my attention in a very real way that, quite frankly, I was more or less aware of but attempting to ignore to a degree,” Urschel said in an episode of the \u201cFreakonomic Radio\u201d podcast<\/a> in 2017. <\/p>\n “The main thing was that I thought about what I was most passionate about and what I was most excited about in life going forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I thought about those one or two or three things, when football all of a sudden was not one of these top two or three things, and football is actually actively hindering me from doing some of these things, well then it became a real conversation.”<\/p>\n He would later detail his own opinion of the correlation between football and CTE in a book titled ‘Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football’ that was released in 2019.<\/p>\n 3<\/p>\n Urschel spent just $25,000 a year despite earning a reported $1.8 millionCredit: Getty 3<\/p>\n Urschel holds a PhD in Maths from MITCredit: Getty<\/p>\n Before declaring for the NFL Draft, Urschel had already earned both a bachelor\u2019s degree and master\u2019s degree in mathematics, earning him the William V. Campbell Trophy, dubbed the academic equivalent of the coveted Heisman.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whilst he was playing football for the Ravens, he was secretly working around the clock on his PhD, and ultimately, he chose to focus on that full time at none other than MIT.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having completed his doctorate degree in 2021, today Urschel and his family still reside in Massachusetts, with him having taken on a role at MIT as a math professor.\u00a0<\/p>\n His key area of interest? Matrix analysis and numerical analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to his MIT biography<\/a>, Urschel explores basis-dependent linear algebra, as well as finding solutions to mathematics problems that are both accurate and efficient. <\/p>\n In his math career, he has already held a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Advanced Study at a research hub in Princeton.\u00a0<\/p>\n Urschel is also a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows.\u00a0<\/p>\n But perhaps his most impressive achievement to date is that the Urschel-Zikatanov Theorem, which uses spectral graph theory to look at connectedness, is named after him.<\/p>\n Although he is no longer on the field, Urschel still has love for football, and in an interview earlier this year, the former offensive lineman spoke about the sport\u2019s increasing usage of analytics and what it does for the game. <\/p>\n Throwback to when Jalen Ramsey got thrown into a chokehold and punched in helmet after beginning mass NFL brawl<\/p>\n \u201cI think it actually makes the game more exciting,\u201d Urschel said<\/a>. \u201cGood time management leads to closer games.\u201d<\/p>\n However, he is unable to follow the game as much due to his career and other commitments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSomehow, when I watch a game, it\u2019s hard to ever watch it as a fan,\u201d the now 34-year-old said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor many, many years, I just watched an insane number of hours of football film. That was my job. It\u2019s very hard to turn that off.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no time to watch pro football and barely time to watch college football.\u201d<\/p>\n Urschel has no regrets about leaving behind a career which could have earned him far more money than the $1.8 million that he made from his rookie contract.<\/p>\n In fact, he was reportedly living on $25,000 a year as a pro<\/a>, which equated to about four percent of his salary from 2016, due to his hobbies (reading, research and playing chess) being inexpensive. <\/p>\n Urschel is living proof that sometimes chasing a dream and being content in life means more than the money that can be earned doing something great, but not necessarily as fulfilling.<\/p>\n \u201cI did retire. But at the same time, I love the NFL. I love football,” Urschel once reveale<\/a>d<\/a>. “I wouldn’t trade my experiences for the world. I do believe that football is a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n Stay up to date with the latest from the NFL across all platforms – follow our NFL Facebook page<\/a>, subscribe to our talkSPORT End Zone YouTube channel <\/a>for all the offseason news, interviews and more <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many football players, reaching the NFL is the pinnacle. But for one former star, education kept calling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2052],"tags":[184,39893,117,2282,7,39894,39896,39897,12244,6,39892,835,39895,169,24112],"class_list":{"0":"post-183020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-ravens","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baltimore-news","10":"tag-baltimore-ravens","11":"tag-baltimoreravens","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-john-urschel","14":"tag-john-urshel-book","15":"tag-john-urshel-family","16":"tag-mit","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-nfl-features","19":"tag-nfl-news","20":"tag-phd","21":"tag-ravens","22":"tag-ravens-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114799887352770257","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/64-baltimore-ravens-looks-game-1006836654.jpg\")
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