After suffering a serious neck injury in November, Seattle Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette announced his retirement Thursday.
In Week 8 against the Dallas Cowboys, Lockette was covering a punt when he got hit by safety Jeff Heath. Lockette suffered a concussion, along with disc and ligament damage in his neck.
"It's kind of tough," Lockette said during a news conference Thursday. "People say, 'Hey dude, are you sad that this happened to you and that the guy hit you and blah, blah, blah?' No, because I'm a dog. And you live by the sword and you die by the sword. So I can't complain about that.
"And I've done a lot of things on the field that I probably shouldn't have gotten away with it. And I don't regret it because I did it for my boys. And it wasn't about me. It wasn't about showing how big and bad I was. It was about your job is to make the Seahawks win. And so whatever it takes to get that done, that's my job. And that's what I was willing to do."
Lockette played in 34 games for the Seahawks over five NFL seasons, finishing his career with 22 catches for 451 yards and four touchdowns. He was also a standout special-teams player.
"Tough day for me, but I don't want anybody to be sad because I'll still be around," he said.
Lockette also posted a couple of thoughts Wednesday on Instagram.
During the offseason, Lockette visited with firefighters and paramedics in Redmond, Washington, and explained to them how close to death he was on the football field.
"[The doctors] said if I would have stood up then, the weight of my head -- left, right, front, back -- I would have died," Lockette said in a video he posted on Facebook. "If one of my teammates would have come over and pulled my arm, just barely, I might have died. Or if the returner at the time would have broken a couple tackles, and they would have rolled and fell on me, I would have died on that field. But what saved my life was the trainers, the work that you guys do."
Lockette's contract with the Seahawks expired after the 2015 season. He turns 30 later this month.