Off topic: Breaking news: Ravens LB Zach Orr retiring ?

[phillyesq]

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if he planned this all along. Fake retirement so that team does not extend RFA tender and then become a UFA once the dust settles.

I don't think this is the case, but fun to put nonsense out there to see if it floats.

Florio is already peddling that conspiracy theory - not so much for Orr, but for other future RFAs.

[Iron City Inc.]

Signing a player with this type of injury puts a bunch of folks on thin ice including the organization overall. Can he pass a physical? Idk, he can play but that type of injury could be a nightmare.

[RuthlessBurgher]

Former Ravens LB Zachary Orr '100 percent confident' he will be back in NFL this season

Former Ravens linebacker Zach Orr to attempt comeback

By Childs Walker

The Baltimore Sun

June 28, 2017, 5:09 PM

In a startling twist to what seemed to be a story of lost promise, former Ravens linebacker Zachary Orr will attempt to play this season despite a congenital neck/spine condition that prompted him to retire in January.

Orr announced his intentions Wednesday morning on the NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” show, saying he’d met with several specialists who believed he could play with minimal risk despite the fact the C1 vertebra at the top of his spinal cord isn’t fully formed.

He is an unrestricted free agent, and his agent, Rob Sheets, said eight teams expressed interest within 90 minutes of Orr’s comeback announcement. Sheets said Orr will visit with the Detroit Lions on Thursday, but will be patient in assessing his options. Orr did not respond to a phone message left by The Baltimore Sun.

“In Zach’s mind, he’s 100 percent confident he will play this season,” Sheets said. “This is a one-in-a-billion situation. I couldn’t even make this up.”

Orr, 25, maintains a strong sentimental connection to the Ravens, the only NFL team he has played for and the one for which he blossomed into a starting linebacker last season. But there’s no indication the team would consider bringing him back after doctors said Orr would face an increased risk of paralysis, or worse, if he continued playing.

“I spoke with Zach yesterday, and he informed me that he would like to continue to play football,” Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome said in a statement. “He is a free agent.”

Orr’s optimism Wednesday stood in sharp contrast to the finality with which he ended his career at a January news conference where he was flanked by Newsome, Ravens coach John Harbaugh and defensive coordinator Dean Pees. At that point, he said he’d been told he could not pass an NFL physical and that he felt blessed to be moving on with his life in good health.

“I had my mind made up. I was like, ‘Man, the doctors told me I was done. This is a serious issue. So I'm going to leave it alone,’” Orr said during his NFL Network interview Wednesday. “But I just kept hearing that from multiple people and some were telling me to just go check out and seek out some more opinions and things like that and come to find out my condition, it is rare — .01 percent of the people have what I have — but there's no actual evidence or facts that I'm at a higher risk than any other player. And it’s actually been documented that a college player who had the exact same thing that I have that returned to play with no problems.”

Sheets said Orr reconsidered his retirement based on a chance encounter two months ago with former Baylor quarterback Seth Russell. Russell knew Orr’s situation and recommended that he visit West Virginia-based spinal surgeon Sanford Emery for another opinion. So Orr flew to Morgantown.

Emery told Orr there was enough bone density and muscle structure around his C1 vertebra that he could play safely once he recovered from a herniated disk in his neck that he’d suffered in the Ravens’ penultimate game last season.

Orr’s agent said that opinion was backed up by other specialists. Sheets said he would never have supported a comeback if the medical opinions did not convince Orr’s parents, Terry and Rita. Terry Orr played eight seasons as an NFL tight end, mostly for the Washington Redskins.

Sheets knows Orr’s comeback will be greeted cynically by some fans, who will say he somehow manipulated the system to become a free agent.

But the reality is he was in line to make about $2.5 million if he played for the Ravens in 2017, with the potential to negotiate a long-term deal from there. The team loved his development as a player and his magnetic personality, and Orr in turn spoke glowingly of his three seasons in Baltimore.

Orr did not file retirement papers after he announced he was done in January, and the Ravens did not place him on the reserve/retired list. They also did not tender him a contract offer — he would have been a restricted free agent — because they had no reason to think he’d play. But Sheets said neither side acted with ulterior motives.

“There was no reason, based on the information we had at the time, to think he was anything other than finished,” Orr’s agent said. “We’re not trying to circumvent the system. If you know anything about this young man, you know that’s the furthest thing from the truth.”

It’s not clear what medical hurdles Orr might have to clear before a team signs him. Sheets noted that physicals are subjective and that some organizations will sign a player even if he fails some medical tests.

He said that ironically, Orr feels fresher than he has in many years because of the months he has spent away from football.

The Ravens strongly indicated they believed Orr’s condition was career-ending when he retired in January. The abnormal vertebra was discovered by chance when Orr went for a follow-up CT scan to examine the herniated disk in his neck. Doctors told him he was fortunate to have played as long as he did without suffering a serious injury.

“He's lucky to have not had any lasting neurologic effects, given his condition,” Dr. Payam Farjoodi, an orthopedic spine surgeon at the Center for Spine Health at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley, Calif., said in an email to The Baltimore Sun at the time.

The Ravens have moved forward with plans to replace Orr with second-year linebacker Kamalei Correa, who has impressed coaches during offseason workouts. But Orr led the team with 132 tackles last season, so his retirement left the team with a significant hole in the middle of its defense.

Orr, meanwhile, sounds ready to continue building his career.

“Now that I've gotten a taste of the game being taken away from me, I’m even more hungry to play,” he said on the NFL Network.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ravens/bs-sp-ravens-zach-orr-comeback-0629-story.html

[RuthlessBurgher]

Unable to get cleared to play, Zach Orr is retiring
Posted by Josh Alper on August 18, 2017, 11:28 AM EDT

Linebacker Zach Orr announced his retirement early in the offseason due to a neck condition, but reversed course in June and said he hoped to continue playing because he felt it might not be as bad as originally feared.

Orr is reversing course again. In a piece he wrote for The Players Tribune, Orr says he spoke to doctors who thought he could continue playing but failed to get cleared to return by Ravens doctors — Orr wasn’t tendered as a restricted free agent by the team after his initial retirement announcement — before formally announcing his plans to keep playing.

He visited six teams and spoke to 11 others and none of them would give the green light for a return to the field and some teams believed his condition leaves him at an elevated risk of a spinal cord injury. As a result, he’s decided to again announce his retirement.

“Today, I’m officially retiring from professional football … again,” Orr wrote. “And I’m even more at peace this time around because the teams have spoken. If there was any way I could come back, I would. Now, I know that’s not possible.”

Orr played three years for the Ravens and led the team in tackles while making 15 starts during the 2016 season.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/08/18/unable-to-get-cleared-to-play-zach-orr-is-retiring/