Teddy Bridgewater found fountain of youth, ready to compete, mentor
Lions QB Teddy Bridgewater has been re-energized after trying out coaching and retirement from the NFL.
It’s been an interesting few years for 33-year-old Teddy Bridgewater. After his 2023 season with the Detroit Lions, he tried out retirement. There, he found a career in high school coaching—immediately winning the Class 3A Florida HSAA state championship.
But after receiving a suspension in 2025 for providing impermissible benefits to his players, he went back to the NFL as a late addition to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Throughout that entire ordeal, Bridgewater learned a lot about himself. The main takeaway?
He’s not ready to be done with football. “It’s like I visited the fountain of youth or something this past year,” Bridgewater said on Monday. “That fire has been lit, and I don’t know what it is—I don’t know if it’s my children or being back home, but it’s just something in me that like, ‘You know what?
I can do this again. ’ “The past couple years I was one foot in, one foot out: contemplating retirement, contemplating playing, coaching, doing all of these different things, and now it’s like, okay, I’ve coached, I know what that’s like. I’ve been retired, I know what that’s like.