Week 14 in the NFL ends Monday night with the Los Angeles Rams (8-4) and Arizona Cardinals (10-2) live on Sky Sports NFL from 1.15 early Tuesday morning.
Andrew Whitworth will make NFL history in Monday Night Football as the oldest player to start left tackle at age 40 as the Los Angeles Rams take on the Arizona Cardinals in their epic all-NFC West showdown. …
Monday’s game will mark Whitworth’s 236th career, 232 of which he started as he also joins Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, now 44, as the only two active NFL players who are at least 49.
Did he ever think that he would enter the starting lineup at 40?
“No, definitely not,” he told reporters. “The first couple of times you get there, you just hope you have a chance to survive in the NFL, let alone play 16 years later, and also play as much as mine, so this definitely awesome and something probably for me in my career, one of the few weeks with a lot of thought, simply because this is a pretty big deal and something that I set as a personal goal almost seven or eight years ago. Being here and thinking about everything I’ve been through is pretty wild. “
Affordability and longevity remain underappreciated traits in a career-slashing league, a fear that landed on Whitworth’s doorstep when he required two knee surgeries ahead of the 2013 season with the Cincinnati Bengals.
Big 4️⃣-0️⃣!
RT to help congratulate Andrew Whitworth on his birthday 🥳#WPMOYChallenge + #ProBowlVote pic.twitter.com/2kuPn4xIUC
– Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) December 12, 2021
Overcoming the physical and mental losses resulting from such a setback paved the way for the important milestone that awaits him Monday night.
“One day at the training camp in 2013, I thought that I might never play again, just because of the way I fought after the surgery,” said Whitworth. “It’s one thing to rehabilitate, but it’s quite another to just think it might be it, and you really don’t know until you finally feel good again and feel yourself again. Sometimes it can take much longer than you planned.
“As for me, when I finally came out of what I call this darkness, and thinking that this is all, I thought:“ You know what, with what I got out of this and what I went through, I would like to see , is there any chance that I can play when I am 40 “.
Whitworth played in Cincinnati between 2006 and 2016 before signing a three-year free agency deal with the Rams in 2017, reaching his fourth Pro Bowl in his first season, followed by the first Super Bowl in the second on his way to earning three more. – a one-year contract in April 2020.
