Miami alum and now former NFL OL Brandon Brooks has announced his retirement today. Congratulations to Brandon on a great NFL career.
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Absolutely! I was reading a Philly article last week talking about how this last injury might have been the straw that broke the camelās back. The consensus there was that it was sad losing such a great player snd even better person. Proud of Brandon and all heās accomplished. Love and Honor!
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Rough year for Redhawk alums. Miamiās two best NFL players of all-time retiring in the same season.
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But now weāve got Touchdown Tommy Doyle, Doug Costin and perhaps an Edelman/Welker type wideout in Jack Sorenson. Might see Dom and/of Sterling next year, too.
Maybe he was #2, but how about the careers of Sherman Smith or Rob Carpenter or Bob Babich. Maybe Ernie Kellerman. Salary wise Brandon was better, but he also had a lot of injuries.
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Pro Bowler, made a ton of money, and beat Tom Brady in a Super Bowl. Just those three things add up to one heck of a career.
Oh and he has the coolest tattoo. Heās rocking that block āMā every day of his life.
Congrats to Brandon. Best of luck in the next chapter.
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There was a stretch where Brandon was considered the best Guard, if not OL in the NFL. Made 3 pro bowls and won a super bowl. No offense to those other guys, who I know had solid careers, but I think Brooks is clearly #2.
So I looked up all these guys on Pro football reference. They had a thing called approximate value, which was their attempt to value each player for each season in comparison to other players that year. Then they gave a total value. Brooks is the highest rated by 1 point over Sherman Smith. They were all pretty close:
Brandon Brooks 58
Sherman Smith 57
Rob Carpenter 49
Bob Babich 49
Ernie Kellerman 44
By the way, they give Ben Roethlisberger 208.
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Jacob Bell had a long NFL career too- but Brooks probably is #2
Pro football reference gave Bell a 38.
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Normally Iād be really sad that a great Miami NFLāer has retired from football, but in this case Iām really excited to see what he does next. Bet we hear from him again, and when we do, heāll make Miamians even prouder than we are right now.
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Just out of curiosity, where do smith and brooks rank among their peers (other RBs or OL)? Like who are the top rated in their position group?
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Sherm has 4-5 really good years but then his productivity fell offā¦may have been due to injuries. His yards per carry was very high early in his NFL career.
Carpenter had a great rookie season w Oilers with close to 700 yards rushing, but then Earl Campbell was drafted and Carpenter then saw less carries and averaged something like 350 yards per year the next 3 years (his prime really) before going over to the Giants as their feature big back. Had a few very good years there as most here are probably aware. He was a bruising runner.
I was fortunate enough to see both of them play while at Miami.
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I donāt know and I am not going to research that. But it would be interesting to know, if you want to research it.
Rob was a pretty good blocker for Campbell.
ā¦and also ran for 4,300 yards plus of his own in his NFL career.
One Miami football legend often overlooked is Milt Stegall ā92. Milt played 3 years for the Bengals and 14 seasons for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He is the leading scorer in CFL history and is in the CFL Hall of Fame. Milt is now an analyst on TSN.
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