Raiola Still Undecided On If He Will Keep Playing, Has Yet To Hear From Any Teams
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - Longtime Detroit Lions center Dominic Raiola has yet to decide whether he will retire or try to play another season or two for another team, he told Stoney, Bill and Sara of 97.1 The Ticket.
The Lions informed Raiola, a free agent who has spent all 14 years of his career in Detroit, that they would not be re-signing him for the 2015 season. He has said he believes he can still play, but he has also repeated that Detroit is all he knows.
"That's obviously something I've got to talk about and decide within my circle," Raiola said. "14 years, not a bad career in the NFL and to do it all here - but I'm healthy, I'm walking away healthy. Who knows? Who knows what's next? I know I can still play. I know I'm going to bust my tail to get ready to play if that is the move. I still think I have a lot to offer. We created a style of play here in Detroit, and it was a tough style of play and wasn't right at times, but I feel like I can bring something to an offensive line room, to an offense, to a quarterback. I can help out. Who knows. We'll see."
Raiola said he has not talked with any other teams about joining them.
"I haven't heard anything yet," Raiola said. "I don't know what the legality with that is, if they can talk to me now or if they can't talk to me, but I haven't heard from anybody yet. It's just something I'm going to decide over time, hopefully in the next few months. There's no teams, nothing official yet. Nobody reached out to me."
Beloved by his teammates, particularly his comrades on the offensive line, Raiola was a polarizing figure to those outside the locker room. Aside from some questionable plays on the field - most recently the apparent stomp of Chicago Bear Ego Ferguson - Raiola had run-ins with fans, both those of opposing teams and those of Detroit. Asked whether he regrets those negative interactions, Raiola hesitated.
"I don't really live my life with regrets," Raiola said. "It happened, and I can't go back. The incidents with the fans, that's something it was never personal with our fans. I just wanted this place to - I wanted to win, and sometimes those things happen.
"I've had some bumps in the road," Raiola added. "Sometimes I just felt like I was overly loyal, too loyal sometimes. People said you cut me open I bleed blue. That's how I was raised, and I was just loyal to the sword. I took that way too far sometimes, whether it be my run-ins with my fans or whatever it was."
Over 14 years, Raiola witnessed an astounding amount of losing and roster turnover. He said the struggles, season after season, did not break his will to win, but his career was not easy.
"A lot of those years we were making plans for vacation in November, and that ain't never fun," Raiola said. "I always had a goal to leave the place better than it was when I got here, and it was pretty bad. We had to overturn the roster two or three times, completely overturn that roster. Some guys aren't even in the NFL, they would cut guys and two years later they weren't even in the NFL. These are first-round picks, second-round picks. It was hard, it was frustrating, but my fight never wavered. The fact that I cared and really just had a fire burning all those years never wavered."
Asked whether there was one personnel decision in particular that bogged down the team, Raiola said there were many.
"There was a period there where we didn't get contributions out of draft picks, and that hurt us," Raiola said. "The thing that hurt us in a good way was having Calvin Johnson, Matthew Stafford and Ndamukong Suh, who are all top-two picks, whatever they were, having them all play extremely well ... It hurt the cap ... I guess it wasn't a personnel decision, those were no-brainer picks, but that hurt the team being able to go pay other people just because of the success of those top picks like that."
A native of Hawaii, Raiola plans on staying in Detroit even after he moves on to another team or retires.
"I've spent half my life here," Raiola said. "I grew up here. I go home now, it's nice, I'm actually going Sunday. It's nice to go back, but I don't know if I could live there ... It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but I'm used to this ... I've got friends that I consider family here. Whatever I do next, this is where I'm going to be making my money ... Everything I know is here
"I see my future here," Raiola added. "Hawaii's a first-class ticket away."
