Pat O'Connor spent nine years fighting to stay in the NFL. On Thursday, he stopped fighting.
The Detroit Lions placed O'Connor on the reserve/retired list, ending his career at age 32. He played 88 games total, never as a starter, but long enough to earn a Super Bowl ring and leave the league on his own terms.
According to The Sporting News, via Yahoo Sports, O'Connor entered the league as a seventh-round pick of the Lions in the 2017 NFL Draft out of Eastern Michigan. He stood 6-foot-4 and weighed 300 pounds. Despite being drafted by Detroit, he did not make the team out of preseason. He spent that fall going through tryouts before the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed him in October.
His time in Tampa Bay was defined by cuts and re-signings. The Bucs released him and brought him back multiple times over the years. He never broke into a featured role, maxing out at six tackles in a season and recording 1.0 sack in 2020. He was mostly a depth piece and contributed on special teams.
That 2020 season produced the highlight of his career. The Buccaneers won Super Bowl LV, and O'Connor was part of the championship roster, earning a ring in what was Tampa Bay's first title in nearly two decades.
After the 2023 season, the Bucs did not bring him back. O'Connor returned to where it started. The Lions signed him, and he played 12 games in 2024, recording a career-high 18 tackles along with a sack. He got eight more games in 2025 and added 10 tackles before the Lions placed him on the retired list Thursday.
His career totals were modest by any statistical measure. But the arc of it, drafted by Detroit, cut, signed and cut again in Tampa Bay, winning a Super Bowl, and then returning to finish with the team that first drafted him, gave it a shape that raw numbers cannot fully capture.
O'Connor was 32 at the time of his retirement.
