A mayfly's life

DeMarco Murray announced Friday he was hanging it up as an NFL running back, which is notable only in the fact that, as the NFL actuarial tables go, it's not notable at all.

He is, after all, a running back. He's 30 years old. And he's been subjected to the NFL's accelerating blunt-force trauma for seven seasons.

In other words, DeMarco Murray is used up.

No position in football better illustrates how destructive professional football is to the human body, and more significantly to the human brain. Murray, a three-time Pro Bowler who led the NFL in rushing for the Dallas Cowboys just four seasons ago, did not specifically mention the last in his statement yesterday. But by now every player in the NFL surely thinks about it every time he steps onto the field.

None of them wants to wind up like Mike Webster, Junior Seau, Dave Duerson -- all the sad cases whose minds went dark well before their time. Not all that long after he retired, Brett Favre confessed he sometimes couldn't remember the details of his kids' sporting events he attended. Tony Dorsett and Jim McMahon struggled to remember how to get home sometimes when they went out. On and on and on.

And Murray?

He's getting out, one suspects, at least partly because his opportunities to be a feature back have dried up. The Titans, for whom he started 31 consecutive games, released him in the offseason. This after an injury-plagued season in which he rushed for a career-low 659 yards and had lost "explosiveness."

Which is just another way of saying, yes, he was used up. After seven years, 7,174 yards, 49 touchdowns and 1,604 carries. At the age of 30.

Which is about when the actuarial tables say running backs begin to fall off the table in terms of production. And which soon could become the new 40 -- i.e., an age virtually no one plays beyond as players more and more realize the terrible price the game exacts.

Yes, these guys get paid a lot of money to endure that price. But these days especially, you wonder if any amount of money is enough.