Fitzpatrick's Long NFL Journey Included a Brief Stop in Tennessee

Ryan Fitzpatrick played for a lot of teams over the course of his 17-year NFL career.

Nine, to be exact, and the Tennessee Titans were one of them.

There won’t be a 10th. The quarterback who delighted fans at virtually every stop with his competitive and sometimes erratic play has retired, according to multiple reports Thursday. The end comes six months shy of his 40th birthday.

Fitzpatrick appeared in just one game – and attempted six passes – last season, his lone one as a member of the Washington Commanders. He was the Week 1 starter but sustained a hip injury early in that contest. Attempts to rehab the ailment were not as successful as hoped, and he underwent season-ending surgery in November.

He played in 166 regular-season games but never was part of a playoff team.

Fitzpatrick spent the 2013 season with Tennessee. He was signed to replace Matt Hasselbeck as a veteran presence behind Jake Locker, the eighth overall pick in 2011 who was promoted to the starting job in 2012. Locker’s own injury issues limited him to just seven starts that year and landed him on injured reserve for the final seven weeks.

Fitzpatrick went 3-6 as a starter for a team that finished 7-9. He led the Titans to victories in the final two weeks of the regular season, and two of his three victories included fourth-quarter comebacks.

In Week 15 against Arizona, he set career-highs with 58 passes and 36 completions (he matched both numbers two years later) and threw for 402 yards with four touchdowns in a 37-34 defeat. It was one of six games in his career, which included 147 starts, in which he topped 400 passing yards and one of 11 with four or more touchdown passes.

He is one of 10 quarterbacks during the Titans era (1999-present) to win at least three games as a starter for the franchise.

Tennessee released him in March 2014 when new coach Ken Whisenhunt overhauled the quarterback room with the addition of veteran backup Charlie Whitehurst, who was familiar with Whisenhunt’s offense, and the selection of Zach Mettenberger in the sixth round of the 2014 draft. Combined, Mettenberger and Whitehurst went 1-14 as Titans starters.

That one season in Tennessee represented a turning point in Fitzpatrick’s career. It was when he went from an established presence on several teams to someone who moved often in search of opportunity. A seventh-round pick in 2005 out of Harvard, he spent two seasons each with St. Louis (2005-06) and Cincinnati (2007-08) and four with Buffalo (2009-12).

Beginning with the Titans, he played for six teams over nine seasons. His best campaign was 2015 when he started every game and went 10-6 with the New York Jets. A tiebreaker left the Jets just short of the final AFC playoff spot, which was as close as he ever came to the postseason. In 2020, he went 4-3 as a starter with Miami, which finished 10-6, one game behind the final AFC playoff team.

Fitzpatrick led the NFL with 23 interceptions in 2011, when he started 16 games for Buffalo, and led the league in average yards per attempt (9.6) and per completion (14.4) In 2018, when he started seven games (he appeared in eight) with Tampa Bay.

For his career, he was 59-87-1 as a starter. Fitzpatrick completed 3,072 of 5,060 passes (60.7 percent) with 223 touchdowns and 169 interceptions. He is 28th all-time in completions, 29th in attempts, 32nd in passing yards, 36th in touchdown passes and 49th in interceptions.