Beaufort native Ron Parker announces NFL retirement
Beaufort native Ron Parker has stepped away from the sport that took him from rural St. Helena Island to the game’s biggest stage.
Parker announced his retirement from the National Football League on Monday in a note posted on his Twitter account. The 32-year-old defensive back bounced around multiple teams before finding a home with the Kansas City Chiefs for five years.
In his announcement, the former Beaufort High School standout alluded to his unconventional story of finding NFL riches after playing junior college football in Kansas, then Division-2 Newberry College and going undrafted before signing with his first NFL team.
“Nobody could walk a mile n my shoes the route I had to take for success!” Parker said in his statement. “I’ll walk that same path and change nothing if I could do it again.”
Parker didn’t indicate what was next. He plays host to annual football camp each year in Beaufort.
Parker played for the Chiefs from 2013 through 2018 after beginning his career as an undrafted free agent in 2011. He signed a five-year, $25-million contract with the Chiefs in 2015 that included a $5 million signing bonus.
He was cut by the Chiefs days before the team appeared in the 2019 AFC Championship game, and he did not play this season. He appeared in 105 games, finishing with 394 tackles and 11 interceptions.
After Beaufort High, Parker enrolled at Independence Community College in Kansas City, where he sat his first year and played receiver on the scout team. He enrolled at Newberry in the spring of 2007 and redshirted his first season before becoming an All-American defensive back.
“I was never given nothing,” Parker told The Beaufort Gazette in 2014 after his first full season in the NFL. “At the end of the day, when I’m in tough situations — when I get released or something happens in the league — I go back to times when I didn’t really have nothing. I just looked at it like ‘Welp, it’s another bump in the road. Keep it moving.’ “
