Taylor Heinicke announced Thursday that his NFL career is over, ending a seven-year run that made the 33-year-old a cult favorite in Washington and carried him through seven franchises. He posted a message on Instagram thanking the people who supported him, saying the ups in his career outweighed the downs tenfold.
Heinicke spent time with seven NFL franchises and appeared in games for five of them, finishing with 29 starts in 42 games, 6,663 passing yards, 39 touchdowns and 28 interceptions. His last stop came with the Los Angeles Chargers, who released him in August after he played four games and attempted five passes in 2024.
His name became most closely tied to Washington after the team signed him to its practice squad in December 2020 as an emergency fourth quarterback. Heinicke had been sleeping on his sister's couch in Atlanta and taking online classes at Old Dominion when Washington called, and he had already logged time as a backup in the XFL in 2019 before getting another NFL shot.
About a month after arriving in Washington, Heinicke started a 31-23 wild-card round playoff loss to Tampa Bay in which he completed 26 of 44 passes for 306 yards, one touchdown and one interception and also ran for a score. Washington rewarded him with a two-year deal worth $4.75 million in the offseason, and he went on to start 24 games over the next two seasons as the Commanders went 12-11-1 in his starts.
Heinicke also started four games for the Atlanta Falcons, and he spent time with Minnesota, New England, Houston and Carolina before landing in Washington. In his farewell post, he said he never imagined he would get to live this life and called the next chapter exciting. For a quarterback who twice seemed close to fading out of the league, the numbers tell one story; the path that got him there tells another.
