The career lifespan of any professional athlete is relatively short. For professional footballers who go on to reach the heights of the NFL, they have to contend with the possibility that their careers may go on to be even shorter than they envision. Jason Bell achieved his goal of playing in the NFL but found retirement difficult to graspTopps FanaticsAccording to Statista and the NFL Players’ Association, the average career length in the league is 3.3 years, depending on the position a player plays.This is far shorter than in other sports, with NBA players playing an average of 4.5 to five years, and MLB players, who, if they make it to the majors, average a career of 5.6 years. Tennis players, meanwhile, have an average career length of 8.5 years, whilst those who play professional golf and are in the PGA average a decade of play at the elite level. For former NFL cornerback and safety Jason Bell, he spent his entire life grinding, like any other athlete, to make it to the league. Although his route to the pros was somewhat unconventional, going undrafted out of UCLA, Bell wound up enjoying stints with the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, and New York Giants. In a flash – six seasons to be exact – he retired in 2007 at the age of 29 after his release from the G-Men. Forced to contend with the reality that he would never pad up and take to the field again, Bell found this transition to be extremely difficult. But these feelings were something he had reckoned with before. After getting hurt in college, which had an inadvertent impact on him not getting drafted in 2001, Bell revealed in an exclusive sit-down with talkSPORT that he struggled to grapple with what his identity was away from football. “My identity as a player was that all I was was a football player. That was me all the way up until I got hurt in college, which was the reason I went undrafted,” Bell told talkSPORT. Bell played college football at UCLA, but an injury impacted his draft stock and he subsequently went undraftedGettyBell wound up playing for three NFL teams in six seasons from 2001-2006Getty“When I got hurt and thought I’d never play again, it was a crisis. It was a reckoning. It was difficult. “I needed to figure out who I was without this game because, with the way I was walking around and my foot was healing, I didn’t think I was going to play again.”“I did everything I could. I missed an entire year. But during that year, I went through the pain of rediscovering myself as an individual without the game. “I loved the game, wanted to play the game and respected the game, but as a person, I had now formulated an identity outside of it.”“So when I got into the league, I was very comfortable being all in as a player and saying, “Hey, I play. This is what I am, this is who I am,” because I knew that when it was over, I’d already been through that loss of something I loved and the identity that came with it. “That being said, when I retired, it was still hard.”NFL retirement was ‘hard’ in other waysWhen the time came for Bell to retire from the NFL, he realized that he was no longer having an identity crisis per se, but that the sudden removal of a daily routine and not being around his teammates – and friends – anymore was what impacted him the most. “The hard part wasn’t my identity. The hard part was the routine and the people I was involved with – my teammates,” Bell revealed. “You retire by yourself. You don’t retire with anybody. “A lot of my friends were still playing. Then the season starts, and nobody’s picking up the phone. They’re busy doing their thing. They don’t mean any harm, but you have to move on. “Learning how to live my life without the routine of the game, and everything that came with it and the people I did it with, was hard.”Fortunately, when Bell stepped away from the game, he wasn’t alone. Both he and his close friend, former Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles and Giants linebacker Carlos Emmons retired at around the same time, so they had that shared experience of retiring from playing professional sport. Bell’s close friend and former Giants teammate Carlos Emmons went through retirement at the same time which helped him come to terms with no longer playing footballGettyBell has since forged a career as an NFL analyst for a UK audienceTopps Fanatics“We spent a lot of time on the phone,” the 48-year-old added. “I had a company I’d started, he had a business he’d started, but we still spent a lot of time talking about how we felt. It really helped. We went through it together.”Having a support system helped massivelyBell candidly explained that having someone in his support system who truly understood what he was feeling and going through helped him navigate everything in a healthier way. Simultaneously, he allowed himself to feel the emotions that come with retirement of what has essentially been a mainstay in his life up until that point.“I guess it was a form of therapy — two people going through the process together, able to communicate and tell each other when they were having a hard day,” he continued. “Everybody goes through it. It’s going to be hard because you love it. Anybody who loves doing something is going to grieve if it’s taken away for whatever reason. “You have to remind yourself that it’s okay to grieve. There’s nothing wrong with you because you care and you’re sad. It’s just life, and you go through it and you’ll be all right.”And Bell is right. Since his retirement, he has gone from strength-to-strength, serving as an NFL broadcaster for the sport’s coverage in the United Kingdom. There, his bubbly and enthusiastic personality really shines through, and has aided the new wave of international NFL fans that are being ushered through. The 2026 Topps Flagship Football London Store Exclusive Mega Box is available exclusively at the Fanatics Collectibles London Flagship Store on Regent Street.