Lions' Teddy Bridgewater Intends to Retire After 2023-24 NFL Season, Coach HSFB

Teddy Bridgewater's NFL career is coming to an end, but he's going to stay around the game of football.

The Detroit Lions backup quarterback told Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free-Press he plans to retire at the end of this season and move into coaching high school football:

"Everything happens for a reason. Injuries, highs, lows, the success, the failures. It all, it builds character, and that's what it did for me. Like I never look like, 'Oh man, what if?' Nah. Whatever was meant for me, it played out the exact way it was meant. And I'm still with that mindset every day and I'm just really appreciative that I'm in Year 10, I tell everyone this is my last year, so I'm in my final year and I'm just enjoying it all, man."

It's unclear where Bridgewater plans to coach, though Birkett noted his alma mater, Miami Northwestern, has a head-coaching vacancy.

According to Birkett, Bridgewater contemplated retirement last offseason when his wife gave birth to the couple's second son. He wound up returning to the league by signing a one-year deal with the Lions in August.

The move reunited Bridgewater and Lions head coach Dan Campbell, who was an assistant head coach and tight ends coach for the New Orleans Saints during Bridgewater's two seasons with the team.

"I was really like content with being done," Bridgewater said of his thought process during the offseason. "And it wasn't really like much that went into it, it was just I felt healthy, I could walk away on my own terms and that was that. But when Dan, like we talked, and we talked, and we talked, and we talked, and it was like, 'Man, all right, Dan, I got you.'"

Bridgewater is doing most of his work behind the scenes with the Lions. His only appearance in a game this season was in Week 5 when he handed the ball off and took two kneel downs in a 42-24 win over the Carolina Panthers.

Birkett pointed out there is a chance Bridgewater could start the regular-season finale against the Minnesota Vikings, the team that originally drafted him in 2014, if the Lions have clinched a playoff spot and their seeding is locked in.

The 31-year-old Bridgewater was the No. 32 overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft. He's thrown for 15,120 yards and 75 touchdowns in 79 career games.