{"id":7949,"date":"2025-07-19T11:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7949\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T11:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:45:07","slug":"chiefs-super-bowl-champion-abruptly-retires-from-nfl-at-age-of-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/7949\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiefs’ Super Bowl champion abruptly retires from NFL at age of 29"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the seventh round to the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

That was the journey traveled by Richie James, who took home a championship ring after spending the 2023 season with the Kansas City Chiefs.<\/p>\n

But late Friday, James took to social media to announce his retirement from the NFL. He hadn’t played in a game since winning the Super Bowl in February 2024.<\/p>\n

“It took time but I have come to realize I am retired from the NFL,”\u00a0James wrote on X<\/a>. “7th round out of MTSU. I feel like I was just a ball player to last that long. Unfortunately my knee never healed properly. I was playing hurt since ’22. Oh well. I gave everything I got to the game of Football.”<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0It’s a big time for Shedeur Sanders in Cleveland<\/a><\/p>\n

James’ NFL career began as a seventh-round pick (240 overall) out of Middle Tennessee State in 2018 by the San Francisco 49ers.<\/p>\n

For the ‘Niners, James played three seasons and caught 38 passes for 689 yards with three touchdowns.<\/p>\n

He spent the 2022 season with the Giants, a career year with 57 grabs for 569 yards and four TDs.<\/p>\n

James joined the Chiefs for 2023 and caught 10 passes in the regular season. In the Super Bowl, he returned four punts for 12 yards.<\/p>\n

In his career, James was known as a return guy, with 1,081 kick return yards (1 TD) and 373 punt return yards.<\/p>\n

James is just 29 years old, but injuries clearly took their toll.<\/p>\n

He’ll always have the ring, though.<\/p>\n

MORE NFL NEWS:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the seventh round to the Super Bowl. That was the journey traveled by Richie James, who took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-7949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}