On our national day of giving thanks, Shaquil Barrett had good reason to be upset.
The two-time Super Bowl winning linebacker wanted to come out of retirement and play out the remainder of the 2024 NFL season.
But the Miami Dolphins, who exclusively hold his rights, declined to move the 32-year-old from the reserve/retired list and onto the active roster ahead of the league’s 4 p.m. ET deadline Thursday.
What’s worse: the Dolphins would not release Barrett either, making him unable to sign with a new team this season, the Miami Herald reports.
And the cherry on top? According to league rules, a player cannot retire and then become a free agent at the end of the season.
In effect, that means the Dolphins will still hold the two-time Pro Bowler’s rights in 2025.
If the franchise decides it doesn’t want him then, come this time next year, Barrett will be sitting in the same spot he is now: watching the Turkey Bowl from the couch.
It’s a legal and technical maelstrom, but the story behind the devolution is a much more linear one.
In March 2024, Barrett, then 31, signed a one-year contract worth $9 million to join the Dolphins.
Just a few months later, as the Florida summer crawled forward, Barrett had a change of heart and announced he was retiring from the league, effective immediately.
The Dolphins were, understandably, stunned.
Hardly a month after the retirement announcement, Barrett joined the “Up and Adams Show” hosted by Kay Adams and teased the “perfect, perfect scenario that would bring me out of retirement.”
Though Barrett maintained how happy he was with his newfound leisure time — and assured the show’s host that he wouldn’t speak his perfect scenario aloud for fear of putting a stop to any behind-the-curtain magic before the magic had even begun to brew — it took Adams all of two minutes and thrifty-eight seconds to coax it out of him.
The linebacker would return, he said, if the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — with whom he played for five years and won a Super Bowl with in 2021 — would take him back.
The Bucs had cut Barrett, who ranked fifth in franchise history with 45 sacks and had shattered the team’s single-season record in the category in 2019, just weeks before he had signed with the Dolphins.
“I wouldn’t [return] for any other scenario, or any other team, or anything like that,” Barrett said at the time. “I’ve got a lot of history down there.”
Ironically, the Dolphins team that claimed it doesn’t want him — or perhaps thought it doesn’t need him — gave up 30 points and nearly 400 yards to the Jordan Love-led Packers during the nightcap of a Thanksgiving triple-header.
Barrett can be thankful he was at least spared from that onslaught.
