This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/ICallAllCats_Cat_ on 2023-10-18 17:39:10.

I was feeling old when I learned that Kirk Cousins was only 34, so I made this:

It’s a graph of the oldest active NFL players per year. Take your birth year and trace the dashed line. When the dashed line is above the colored dots… Congratulations! You’re older than every active NFL player!

Examples:

  • If you were born in 1980, 2023 is the first year you are older than every NFL player thanks to Tom Brady’s retirement.
  • If you were born in 1965, you were older than every NFL player as of the 2009 season when John Carney retired.

The graph did mostly what I expected; when an old guy retires, the next-oldest guy is younger than that guy was. That new oldest guy is always getting older because time is cruel. The graph zig-zags up and down mostly as expected, but there were two neat pieces of NFL Old Man History that show up here that I wanted to share:

Steve DeBerg

If you were born in 1955, you were older than every NFL player starting in the 1996 season after Vince Evans retired. Generally, once you’re older than every player, it’s like that forever. And that makes sense, right? Like, what’s a team going to do? Hire an even older guy? Of course not! That would be crazy!

… But that’s exactly what happened in 1998. Steve DeBerg retired in 1993 when he was, at the time, the oldest NFL player. He then un-retired in 1998 for a brief stint with the Falcons and became the oldest player even on a Super Bowl roster. So he was the oldest player, retired, then returned to continue to be the oldest player. Pretty neat!

(Interestingly, his Wikipedia page says he got divorced in 1996 before un-retiring. It made me think of Brady’s un-retirement after splitting with Giselle. I hope Adam Vinatieri’s marriage is doing well, but if not there’s a chance he returns in 2024.)

Morten Andersen

If you were born in 1960/1961 you were older than every NFL player as of the 2005 season when Gary Anderson retired…

… Until Morten Andersen came back in 2006! And he used that un-retirement to overtake Gary Anderson on the all time scoring leaderboard. They would both eventually be overtaken by Adam Vinatieri, but Morten Andersen was the all-time NFL scoring leader for about 10 years in there.

[Data details: I got the roster data from NFLFastR. There’s a little wonkiness with how the data decided who was active vs who was on practice rosters. Player’s age was calculated as of September 1. I don’t know when your birthday is, so there’s some wiggle room here.]