Mike Minter Retires From Carolina Panthers
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Citing nagging knee injuries, Carolina Panthers safety Mike Minter, the team’s all-time leading tackler, announced his retirement yesterday, putting an end to his great 10-year career. Panthers owner Jerry Richardson called Mike “the face of the franchise” and I’ve bulleted some of the main reasons why:
- Mike is Carolina’s career leader in games started and tackles.
- He has 467 more tackles than any other player in franchise history.
- His 141 starts and 94 consecutive starts are team records, as are his nine fumble recoveries and four interception returns for touchdowns.
- Mike overcame three knee surgeries and a staph infection early in his career to become the key player in Carolina’s secondary.
- Mike had not missed a game since early in the 2001 season, despite several injuries along the way (he played with a torn biceps muscle and even on a broken foot during Carolina’s loss to New England in the Super Bowl at the end of the 2003 season).
- As the Panthers’ defensive captain the past five seasons, Mike was well respected in the locker room and in the community, where he was involved in several business and charitable activities.
Mike Minter is not someone the Panthers will be able to replace. He played the game the way it was meant to be played — with guts and with heart. In a farewell press conference, Mike said:
Tags: Carolina Panthers, Mike-Minter, NFL“I thought about it long and hard. I don’t want to be at 80 or 85 percent, but want to be remembered as a player who always played at 100 percent. I want to say this is probably the second hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do. The first thing was losing my mom, and the second thing is losing football. This is a game I love, a game I have been playing for a long time and it was a hard decision to come to. Coming into the offseason, you figure you will get healthy, get your knees back and try to get some more magic out of these legs. At the end of the day, there wasn’t anything left.”
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