Cardinals defensive lineman Calais Campbell said in August that he’d “be very surprised” if the 2025 wasn’t his final season in the NFL, but he isn’t making any announcements ahead of the final game of the regular season.
Campbell’s 18th season will end with Sunday’s game against the Rams, but he isn’t ruling out a 19th year at this point. He said he wants to take some time after the season to decompress and that he doesn’t “know if I’m going to retire or not because I don’t know how my body is going to feel” after that process.
“The last few years I’ve been through this process I’ve known pretty quickly that I’ve wanted to play again,” Campbell said, via the team’s website. “It didn’t take me that long — within a month or so, I knew I wanted to play football again. We’ll see. I hope to know quickly if I don’t want to play football again. The biggest thing is if I do want to play football again, I give myself the opportunities to play football again. I try to always sign my work and play at a level that they want me back. Even if I decide not to play again, I want to have the ability to say no, rather than them saying, ‘See you later.’”
Campbell spent his first nine NFL seasons with the Cardinals and returned to the team on a one-year deal this year. He has started every game and recorded 41 tackles and 6.5 sacks in his second Arizona stint. That production should create interest from the Cardinals and/or others and it doesn’t sound like it will be long before Campbell reveals whether he’ll be back on the field in 2026.
