Sports Stars Who Are Close to Their Sell-By Date
Watching the decline of an athlete is similar to watching a thoroughbred that comes up lame but doesn’t realize it and keeps racing. There’s both sadness and nostalgia in witnessing once-great athletes who are nearing their sell-by date, because as sports fans we tend to juxtapose their glory days with their present reduced state, trying to reconcile how things went south so quickly.
The athletes on this list have all been recognized as All-Stars or have earned championships and titles, and some are even future Hall of Famers.
But they have all shown a marked decline in production or wins, once again proving the adage that “age is undefeated” when it comes to professional sports.
This is no indictment on these athletes because they have all provided us with iconic moments and indelible memories that will last long past their retirement speeches, which for some may come sooner rather than later.
Honorable Mention
1 of 10
Dirk Nowitzki
An Achilles injury has limited Nowitzki to only five games this season, but his production hasn't fallen off the cliff, so the jury is out until he returns to the court and shows what he has left.
Derrick Rose
Rose has shown flashes of his old talent, but it's unrealistic to expect him to ever return to his MVP form. But he appears to be a solid contributor with the New York Knicks, enough that he can't be written off quite yet.
Carson Palmer
With the exception of two shaky playoff games, Palmer had a fantastic season last year. So even though he's looked depleted this season, the entire Arizona Cardinals team has underperformed, which has the effect of making Palmer look even worse. Let's see what happens next season, especially if the Cardinals draft a quarterback in 2017.
Tony Parker
2 of 10
Tony Parker, 34, will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on the first ballot because his numbers are Hall-worthy. He’s one of the 10 best European NBA players of all time, per Aaron Bollwinkel of NBADraft.net.
Parker is a six-time All-Star, four-time NBA champion and four-time All-NBA selection.
Through 17 games in the 2016-17 NBA season, Parker’s career numbers are 16.5 points, 2.9 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game, but numbers don’t always tell the full story.
Parker’s emergence in the years after he was drafted in 2002 helped the Spurs win four titles. Without the French speedster breaking down defenses and hitting that patented one-handed floater, it’s doubtful that San Antonio would possess as much championship hardware.
But even a cursory glance at his stats show a steady decline in points and assists since the 2012-13 season, in which he averaged 20.3 points, the second-highest of his career.
Since then, Parker has averaged 16.7, 14.4, 11.9 and 9.9 points, respectively, and his assists have trended down.
When the Spurs lost in the first round of the 2015 playoffs to the Los Angeles Clippers, Parker averaged 10.9 points and 3.6 assists per game and could not cover Chris Paul, who won the series on a last-second shot.
And during last season’s second-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Parker had similar troubles with the whirling dervish known as Russell Westbrook, and the Frenchman averaged a paltry 10.4 points and shot 25.0 percent from three-point range.
The truth is that Parker’s peak years are gone. While he can deliver every now and then for the Spurs, he can’t stay in front of the younger point guards who dominate the ball in the Western Conference such as Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers and Mike Conley of the Memphis Grizzlies.
There’s no shame in losing a step, but as the playoffs near in 2017, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich will have to decide whether Parker continues to claim the lion’s share of minutes or whether Patty Mills and Dejounte Murray will eat into the time Parker spends on the court.
Albert Pujols
3 of 10
By any standard of excellence, Albert Pujols, 36, is a first-ballot Hall of Famer and should expect that phone call five years after he retires.
But the Pujols of 2016 is not the Pujols that once dominated pitchers and played outstanding defense.
As David Schoenfield of ESPN.com wrote, Pujols’ on-base percentage has declined every single year since 2008, from a high of .462 to a low of .307 in 2015.
His batting average has had a similar southward decline, from .357 in 2008 to .244 in 2015. Those numbers did not greatly improve in 2016, in which Pujols had a .268 batting average and a .323 on-base percentage.
After 16 years in the major leagues, Pujols has suffered a raft of injuries that has slowed his reaction time and bat speed.
Pujols plays for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim with reigning AL MVP outfielder Mike Trout, who is a poignant reminder of how far Pujols has fallen from his lofty heights.
The Angels can’t trade Pujols because of his fat contract, although they wouldn’t get much in return anyway. Pujols will retire in a few years. Despite his precipitous decline, many baseball writers believe he is Hall-bound.
Graham Womack of Sporting News wrote that Pujols will get into the Hall of Fame on the strength of his first 11 years in the league because he will likely have 3,000 hits and 600 home runs by the time he retires to go with a .300 career batting average.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Fedor Emelianenko
4 of 10
For about a decade during his prime with Pride Fighting Championships, the man known to fans as Fedor and The Last Emperor was the dominant talent in MMA.
Even people who didn’t know the difference between a rear-naked chokehold and an armbar could tell you that the dour-faced Russian with the man-bod was the baddest dude on the planet.
Fedor Emelianenko, 40, has a lifetime record of 36 wins, four losses and one no-contest through December.
Seventeen of his wins came via submission and another 11 came via brutal knockouts, attesting to the stand-up and ground skills that made him a legend.
Emelianenko’s list of the conquered includes UFC Hall of Famers Mark Coleman and Rodrigo Nogueira, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic, former UFC champions Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski and former Strikeforce champion Brett Rogers.
But his dominance ended when former UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum submitted him on June 26, 2010, which was followed by losses—each by TKO—to Antonio Silva and Dan Henderson.
The three consecutive losses punctured Emelianenko’s bubble of invincibility. That he never signed with the UFC because of contract differences means he never tested his skills against the best fighters of the modern MMA era.
Since those losses, Emelianenko has won five consecutive bouts against the MMA version of tomato cans, further damaging his legacy as one of the all-time greats.
The now-retired Nogueira, who is the only other former Pride heavyweight champion, recently advised Emelianenko to retire, per Dave Doyle of MMA Fighting.
"If he got to the UFC five years ago, maybe seven years ago, something like that, he'd be in his prime," Nogueira said. "But now, it's not his time ... anymore. If I'm in his place, it's time to retire."
Reggie Bush
5 of 10
Reggie Bush, 31, is not going to the Hall of Fame. But despite never quite living up to being the No. 2 pick in the 2006 NFL draft, he was a major contributor to the New Orleans Saints’ offense during the 2010 playoffs that ended with the team’s emotional victory over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV.
Bush amassed 1,050 combined rushing, receiving and punt-return yards during that Super Bowl season, scoring 11 touchdowns through the playoffs.
He also ranks first among all running backs in receptions since 2006 with 466, and second in receiving yards for a running back with 3,489.
After spending four seasons with the Saints, Bush signed with the Miami Dolphins in 2011 and had a productive season, earning his first 1,000-yard season.
He left the Dolphins after a strong year in 2012 in which he rushed for 986 yards and scored six rushing and two receiving touchdowns. He signed with the Detroit Lions for two years, then joined the San Francisco 49ers.
But since the 2012 season, Bush’s numbers have steadily declined. He missed 11 games with the 49ers due to injury and has just one touchdown and five yards rushing for the Buffalo Bills this season.
In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times’ Sam Farmer, Bush sounded like a man who knew his sell-by date was approaching.
“It’s out of my control whether I’m active on game days or not,” Bush said. “The biggest thing for me is during practice, making sure I’m still getting the work in somehow, some way … so I’m not just twiddling my thumbs and then maybe get the call and my body’s not physically ready.”
But the cruel truth about aging in sports is that the mind may be willing, but the body simply can’t do what it once could. Athletes are usually the last to accept that reality.
Tony Romo
6 of 10
Tony Romo’s inclusion on this list is different because, despite the fact that he’s 36, he hasn’t shown the same obvious signs of decline in productivity and skills as the other athletes mentioned.
But he’s still reached his sell-by date simply because, barring injury, he will not regain his starting job with the Dallas Cowboys.
And that’s mostly due to the fact that he just can’t stay healthy, and no team can afford to bet big on a signal-caller who doesn’t take the field often enough to be a difference-maker.
As Todd Archer of ESPN.com chronicled in a piece about Romo’s fragility, the once-and-never-again Dallas quarterback has played 16 games in only four of his nine full seasons with the team as a starter.
Despite some bizarre comments by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones about knowing when the time would come for Romo to replace incumbent quarterback Dak Prescott, only a catastrophic injury to Prescott would lead to that fanciful notion.
The three realistic options for Romo are to stay with the Cowboys and collect a fat check as a backup, demand a trade to a contender or retire.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL.com, Romo has considered retiring and remaining with Dallas in some official capacity.
No matter what happens, there is a sense of inevitability that Romo’s best days as a starting quarterback are behind him.
BJ Penn
7 of 10
Like Fedor Emelianenko, all MMA fans know BJ Penn by his nickname “The Prodigy, which refers to the prodigious amount of talent he possesses.
Penn, 38, has a 16-10-2 record with wins over UFC Hall of Famer Matt Hughes, former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre and MMA legend Renzo Gracie.
Penn is a member of the UFC Hall of Fame and once held the UFC Lightweight Championship, which he defended three times, and the UFC Welterweight Championship, which he defended once.
He is the only fighter to hold the lightweight and welterweight title at the same time. Penn was also inducted into the Black Belt magazine and Sherdog’s Mixed Martial Arts hall of fames and earned a Mixed Martial Arts Lifetime Achievement Award from Fight! Magazine.
But since he destroyed Hughes on Nov. 20, 2010, via a first-round TKO, Penn hasn’t won a fight in the Octagon.
The knock on Penn is that he was the most talented of all MMA fighters but lacked the motivation and desire to train year-round and wasn’t always at his best during some of his fights.
Penn retired after his third defeat to Frankie Edgar but came out of retirement in January, citing a hunger to win the 145-pound title.
But with three consecutive losses going into his Jan. 15 UFC Fight Night bout against Yair Rodriguez, many MMA experts believe Penn’s contending days are long over.
UFC boss Dana White told TMZ, via Ross Cole of MMA Insight: “BJ Penn probably should have been one of the best ever, to ever live, to ever do it. But, BJ was so talented, you know. I just … I don’t know. I think BJ, in his own words, would go back and do things differently if he could.”
Robert Griffin III
8 of 10
The man known as RGIII probably wishes he could erase the past three years like a bad drawing on an Etch A Sketch and start over.
But the football deities gave Griffin, 26, two transcendent seasons in which he threw for a total of 36 touchdowns and 6,403 yards.
He was a Pro Bowl selection in the 2012-13 season and many believed that the read-option, which he had perfected, would become the new standard for mobile NFL quarterbacks.
That never happened.
Injuries, a lack of evolution in his passing game and a stubborn resistance to believing he needed to improve destroyed Griffin’s career.
Since the end of the 2013-14 season, he has played in 12 games, including three this season, and thrown for four touchdowns.
He plays for the Cleveland Browns, the worst franchise in the NFL, and he has looked just as lost as he did during the last season he played for the Washington Redskins in 2014.
Even before Griffin signed with the Browns, anonymous NFL personnel were not bullish on his future prospects.
“He is done,” said one NFL offensive coach, per Chris Wesseling of NFL.com. “The reason is, the injury slowed his legs, and his ego will not allow him to hit rock-bottom and actually grind his way back up the right way.”
If Griffin were on trial to determine whether he could be successful in the NFL as a quarterback, those words would have likely convinced a jury to render a “no-chance” verdict.
Tiger Woods
9 of 10
Tiger Woods, 40, was No. 1 in the World Golf Ranking for 682 total weeks, won 18 World Golf Championships, owned a seven-tournament winning streak and made a record 142 consecutive cuts from 1998 to 2005, per Golf Digest.
Oh, and he also won 14 major championships, second only to Jack Nicklaus in PGA history.
And then injuries, a bruising public scandal, a divorce and the death of his beloved father, Earl Woods, all conspired to reduce Woods to a bit player on the world golf stage.
Woods has not won a major since 2008 and has not won a PGA tournament since 2013.
Some believe that Woods’ injuries have robbed him of his legendary short-putt game and thunderous drives. Wright Thompson of ESPN The Magazine makes a strong case for the psychological effects of losing his father as having a domino effect on Woods’ confidence and current feeling of overwhelming emptiness that he believes plagues the man many feel is the greatest golfer of all time.
Woods’ close friend Michael Jordan, an icon who has handled the burden of greatness in a markedly different way, put it succinctly, per Thompson: “The thing is, I love him so much that I can’t tell him, ‘You’re not gonna be great again.’”
No one knows if that’s true, but eight years of a slow, sad decline may have provided an answer long before Woods ever thought he was done as a player.
Ryan Howard
10 of 10
Last month, the Philadelphia Phillies declined Howard’s option for the 2017 MLB season, ending their long association with their power-hitter.
But it wasn’t a surprising decision given how far Howard, 37, has fallen from his previous heights.
Howard had a batting average of .313, hit 58 home runs and had 149 RBI in his first full season in 2006, a feat that earned him the NL MVP.
He followed that up with 47 homers and 136 RBI in 2008 the same year the Phillies won the World Series, and 45 home runs and 141 RBI in 2009.
But then injuries derailed his 2012 and 2013 seasons. When he came back in 2014 he was a shell of his former self, hitting 23 homer runs and 77 RBI in 153 games and striking out an eye-popping 190 times.
His decline continued in 2015 and 2016, in which he combined for a total of 48 home runs and 136 RBI, numbers that he previously would have totaled in a single season.
The Phillies are clearly rebuilding and Howard just doesn’t fit in their plans.
And even before the 2016 season, the Philadelphia Daily News’ Stu Bykofsky penned an open letter to Howard, asking that he retire instead of just becoming another once-great player who “just run out of teams willing to give them a contract.”
Howard will likely find a host of takers for the 2017 season, especially an American League team that can use a situational hitter.
But watching him these days is a reminder that hanging on too long can color an athlete’s legacy, even if that athlete’s stats are as solid as Howard’s.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
