Following 13 seasons with five teams, including winning a pair of Super Bowls with the New England Patriots, wide receiver Danny Amendola is retiring, his agent Erik Burkhardt tweeted.
The 36-year-old Amendola's final season ended up being a 2021 campaign with the Houston Texans in which he played in only eight games, but he'll be most remembered for his time in Boston.
From 2013 through 2017, Amendola was a trusted slot receiver for Tom Brady and a special teams standout to boot, playing in three Super Bowls with two victories.
All told, Amendola played 163 games with 76 starts, and recorded 617 career receptions for 6,212 yards receiving and 24 touchdowns during his time with the St. Louis Rams, Patriots, Miami Dolphins, Detroit Lions and Texans. He finished his career with 11,761 all-purpose yards.
Of greatest note, though, is that when it counted most, the receiver nicknamed "Playoff Danny" had some of his best games.
He played in 13 postseason games and they were all with the Patriots. In the playoffs, he had 57 receptions for 709 yards and six touchdowns, with TD catches in New England's XLIX and LI wins over the Seattle Seahawks and Atlanta Falcons, respectively.
His finest showing came in his final postseason run with the Pats during the 2017 season. Amendola had eight catches for 152 yards in the Patriots' Super Bowl LII loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. It concluded a three-game run in which he had 26 catches for 348 yards and two touchdowns -- both of the scores coming in the fourth quarter of an AFC Championship Game win over the Jacksonville Jaguars.
A 5-foot-11, 185-pound Texas Tech product, Amendola went undrafted and started his career with the Rams in 2009.
In his second season, Amendola began to make noise as he worked well with quarterback Sam Bradford to the tune of catching a career-high 85 receptions for a career-high 689 yards. Amendola proved to be a dependable option out of the slot and at the second level.
Following four seasons with the Rams, Amendola joined New England and proved to be a perfect fit for the Patriot Way. Amendola's five seasons in New England were his most with any team, and he registered 230 grabs for 2,383 yards and 12 touchdowns during this stay.
Amendola also took pay cuts multiple times to stick with Brady and the Pats, but eventually moved on to Miami in 2018. After just one season with the Dolphins, he was released and went on to play two seasons with the Lions from 2019-2020 before his final year in Houston.
Known for his clutch play in the playoffs, Amendola never saw the postseason after he shipped out of Boston. But he continued to produce with the Dolphins and Lions, putting up numbers consistent to his Patriots production (at least 45 catches each season and at least 575 yards receiving each year).
Now, having spent time recently with Brady, Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski filming 80 for Brady, Amendola can join Gronk and Jules in retirement, thinking of the games and glory won during their winters in New England.
