Tiki Barber will try to return to the National Foo

[dasdb888]

Tiki Barber will try to return to the National Football League more than four years after playing his last game for the New York Giants. Barber, the Giants’ career rushing leader with 10,449 yards, announced his decision yesterday through his agent, Mark Lepselter. Barber, who in the past year went through a failed marriage and lost his broadcasting job, didn’t give a reason for his planned comeback.

He’ll be 36 next season. “I just didn’t expect Tiki Barber to be the type of guy who decided that he wanted to come back after he left,” said former Giants linebacker Carl Banks,Oakland Athletics hat, New York Giants Jerseys now a radio broadcaster for the team on WFAN and Sirius. “He’s always been his own man, but this one is a bit interesting, to say the least.” The Giants said in a statement that they would release Barber from the final two years of his contract once a collective bargaining agreement is reached with the players’ union, making him a free agent. Barber played his entire 10-year NFL career with the Giants and retired in January 2007. The team won the Super Bowl the following season. “We wish Tiki nothing but the best, and when we are able to make the transaction, we will release him from our reserve/ retired list,” the team said.
Jim Fassel, who coached Barber for seven seasons in New York, said that Barber is probably in “very good shape” after his break from football. “He hasn’t taken a pounding,” Fassel said in a telephone interview. “If he played running back the last four years it’d probably be the end of the road, but he probably has a couple of years left.” Banks, 48, said it’s unlikely Barber will be able to regain the form that helped him rush for more than 1,000 yards in each of his last five NFL seasons. Barber rushed for a career-high 1,860 yards in 2005 and 1,662 yards in his final season with the Giants. Former NFL rushing champion Ricky Williams, who missed almost two full seasons after violating the league’s substance- abuse policy, was 31 when he returned in 2008. NFL Jerseys Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick was out of the NFL for two seasons, spending 18 months in jail for his role in an interstate dog-fighting ring. When he returned in 2009, he was 29. Only three NFL running backs over the age of 30 rushed for more than 500 yards last season. Williams, now 33, had 673 yards for the Miami Dolphins, 31-year-old LaDainian Tomlinson had 914 yards for the New York Jets and 32-year-old Thomas Jones had 896 yards for the Kansas City Chiefs. “It’s a young man’s game,” Banks said by telephone. “Some would say (Barber) had four years without punishing his body, but you take into account the 10 years he did play.”