Kenechi Udeze retires from football
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Former USC star Kenechi Udeze announced today that has retired from football.
Udeze was the Minnesota Vikings’ first-round draft choice out of USC in 2004, and he started four years for the team.
But in February 2008, he was diagnosed with leukemia and missed all of last season trying to recover.
Udeze has said his leukemia is in remission, and after a bone marrow transplant more than a year ago he made it back to the practice field this spring and summer.
However, the comeback taxed him. ‘I’d be lying if I said it was easy,’ he told reporters in May at a Vikings’ minicamp. There was never an easy point. The first time I went back to USC and started working out with the fellas, I fell. I took two steps and fell.’
Still feeling the side effects, he felt he was not able to keep playing.
The Pioneer Press reported on its website:
Udeze was one of the team’s most popular players, with a charming personality, but didn’t produce the results the team would have preferred from the 20th overall pick. In 51 games ... Udeze had only 11 sacks. In 2007, he did tie for the Vikings’ lead in sacks (five) and ranked second in quarterback hurries (30). Vikings Coach Brad Childress talked fondly about Udeze today in his afternoon press conference. ‘’He’s so worried about being a quitter,’Childress said. ‘Just the things he’s overcome already in his young life, to be alive and thriving -- it took him a while to come to grips with that.’
--Mike Hiserman
