Brian Allen, the Los Angeles Rams center who helped the team to win the Super Bowl in the 2021 season, has retired from the NFL at the age of 29.
The news was announced by Allen’s agency and sees him leave the game after just six seasons.
The best of those campaigns culminated in Super Bowl glory, with Allen starting 16 of 17 games in the regular season for the Rams, as well as four playoff games, as they beat the Cincinnati Bengals at SoFi Stadium to life the Lombardi trophy.
The Rams took him with the 111th pick in the 2018 Draft out of Michigan State University.
Allen was signed by the Cleveland Browns in 2024 but they released him in August of that year with an injury settlement after he had been struggling with a calf issue.
‘The last few years have been tough physically and mentally and it has become pretty apparent my body can’t meet the demands of what an NFL season requires anymore,’ Allen said in a statement circulated on social media.
Brian Allen, the former Los Angeles Rams center, has retired from the NFL at age 29
Allen is a Super Bowl winner and also the first NFL player to test positive for Covid-19
‘I love this s***, I always have and I always will. I’m going to miss it for the rest of my life.
‘I can honestly say to myself I’ve left it all out there and I don’t have anything left to give or prove this game as a player.’
As well as winning the Super Bowl in the 2021 campaign, Allen was also on the Rams roster when they lost to Tom Brady’s New England Patriots in February 2019.
Allen also marked himself into the history books of the NFL with a unique milestone as the first player in the league to contract Covid-19 at the time of the pandemic.
‘I couldn’t smell anything,’ Allen said at the time. ‘I lost all sense of smell to the point where I had smelling salts here, I cracked them open, put them to my nose and nothing happened.
‘All I could feel was texture in my mouth – literally, it was the only sense I had. Then I got periodic sore throats. I got really fatigued, my throat would start burning, everything felt different than every other flu I’ve had.’
