It\u2019s been an interesting few years for 33-year-old Teddy Bridgewater. After his 2023 season with the Detroit Lions, he tried out retirement. There, he found a career in high school coaching\u2014immediately winning the Class 3A Florida HSAA State Championship. But after receiving a suspension in 2025 for providing impermissible benefits to his players, he went back to the NFL as a late addition to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.<\/p>\n
Throughout that entire ordeal, Bridgewater learned a lot about himself. The main takeaway? He\u2019s not ready to be done with football.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like I visited the fountain of youth or something this past year,\u201d Bridgewater said on Monday. \u201cThat fire has been lit, and I don\u2019t know what it is\u2014I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s my children or being back home, but it\u2019s just something in me that like, \u2018You know what? I can do this again.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe past couple years I was one foot in, one foot out: contemplating retirement, contemplating playing, coaching, doing all of these different things, and now it\u2019s like, okay, I\u2019ve coached, I know what that\u2019s like. I\u2019ve been retired, I know what that\u2019s like. I just want to keep playing ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Bridgewater committed to a life back in the NFL this offseason. He has spent the past few months training in southern Florida, surrounding himself with young players like Jonathan Taylor, Breece Hall, and former Lions teammate Maurice Alexander, feeding off their youth and energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI (had) tricked myself thinking that I\u2019m old. I\u2019m not old, I\u2019ve got so much left in the tank that I can continue to play in this league. I\u2019ve got so much left to offer this game I just want to continue to contribute in every aspect that I can,\u201d Bridgewater said.<\/p>\n
As the team\u2019s backup quarterback behind Jared Goff, Bridgewater knows one of the way he can contribute is having another set of veteran eyes in his position room. But he\u2019s also itching to go out there to compete and play\u2014the part of the game he has missed the most while away.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been that type of player who just wants to see others have success,\u201d Bridgewater said. \u201cI always felt like, the quarterback, we play a huge role in other\u2019s success. If I could just go out there and help a sixth-round wide receiver have a four or five year career. Or an undrafted free agent get four or five years out of the league from just competing with them throughout the spring, preseason, training camp. That\u2019s just something that I look forward to doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been an interesting few years for 33-year-old Teddy Bridgewater. After his 2023 season with the Detroit Lions,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,153,1889,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-830638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroit-lions-news","11":"tag-detroit-lions-quotes","12":"tag-detroitlions","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-lions","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116282795487400687","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830638","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=830638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}