LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Teddy Bridgewater is stepping away from the NFL again, and this time it may be for good.
Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell announced Sunday that Bridgewater, the former University of Louisville star, has decided to leave the team. NFL Network reported that retirement is likely, and the Lions subsequently placed the 33-year-old quarterback on the reserve/retired list.
"I've known Teddy a long time," Campbell said. "Man, the human being is unbelievable. The player, everything he's about, the type of teammate he is, the way he prepares, always played the game up here (pointing to his head)."
Coach Campbell with an update on Teddy Bridgewater, who is stepping away from the team. pic.twitter.com/BO5sq5jXPS
— Detroit Lions (@Lions) August 9, 2026
If this is the end, it closes one of the more winding NFL careers ever produced by a Louisville player — and Bridgewater's second retirement in three years.
Bridgewater initially stepped away from the NFL following the 2023 season and returned home to Miami, where he became head coach at his alma mater, Miami Northwestern High School. He led the school to a Florida state championship in his first season and spoke often about rediscovering a sense of purpose working with young players.
Bridgewater's year in high school coaching became notable for more than winning. He was suspended after acknowledging that he had provided players with meals, transportation and other assistance prohibited by Florida high school athletic rules. The punishment generated enough attention that Florida lawmakers eventually changed the rules rather than Bridgewater changing the way he helped kids.
The resulting "Teddy Bridgewater Act" allows coaches to spend up to $15,000 of their own money each year helping athletes with food, transportation, equipment and other basic needs.
But football wasn't quite finished with him.
Bridgewater joined Detroit late in the 2024 season, spent the 2025 season with Tampa Bay and returned to the Lions this offseason, where he was expected to back up Jared Goff.
Campbell, who was an assistant coach in New Orleans when Bridgewater played there, remembered Sunday what happened when Saints quarterback Drew Brees injured his thumb in 2019.
Bridgewater took over. New Orleans won all five games he started.
"I'll never forget 2019 when Drew got injured," Campbell said. "We had just gone out to the Rams and got beat out there and Drew, you know, got his thumb, and we lost him for five weeks. And Teddy stepped in and we won five in a row, man. That was Teddy.
"Just his time being with us meant a lot and meant a lot to our guys."
Bridgewater's NFL career began when Minnesota selected him with the final pick of the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft. He became the Vikings' starting quarterback as a rookie and made the Pro Bowl after his second season before suffering a devastating knee injury just before the 2016 season.
The injury threatened not merely his football career but the use of his leg.
He came back anyway.
Bridgewater eventually played for Minnesota, New Orleans, Carolina, Denver, Miami, Detroit and Tampa Bay, finishing with 15,182 passing yards, 75 touchdown passes and a 66.3% completion percentage.
Before all of it, he became one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in Louisville history.
Bridgewater threw for 9,817 yards and 72 touchdowns in three seasons with the Cardinals from 2011-13. His signature performance came in the 2013 Sugar Bowl, when he threw for 266 yards and two touchdowns as Louisville upset No. 3 Florida 33-23.
He returned to Louisville this spring as the featured speaker at the Kentucky Derby Festival's They're Off! Luncheon and reflected on a football life that had taken him through injuries, comebacks, coaching and a first attempt at retirement.
Bridgewater said then that coaching at Miami Northwestern had given him something the final years of his playing career had not.
"I found that joy, that passion of just coaching kids, molding them, shaping them, giving them all the life lessons that I was taught, all the morals that all the great men instilled in me and pouring back into them," Bridgewater said in April. "And it was one of the best years of my life, because I felt like I was finally doing something that I wanted to do."
In fact, Bridgewater said the final three years of his first NFL run had begun to feel as if he were playing for everyone except himself.
"When I finally stopped and started coaching, I was like, oh, man, this is like what I really want to do," he said.
And then football drew him back. A quarterback room in Tampa Bay reminded him what the game used to feel like.
"I found this new love for football," he said. "I feel like I'm 21 again."
Four months later, at 33, Bridgewater has decided to step away again.
Whether this is officially the end remains for Bridgewater to say.
But Campbell sounded Sunday like a coach saying goodbye.
"He had a huge heart," Campbell said. "He's going to be missed."
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