Veteran DL Peters retires after 12 NFL seasons

Defensive lineman Corey Peters announced his retirement Thursday after 12 NFL seasons.

Peters, 34, played in 12 games (three starts) with the Jacksonville Jaguars last season.

“Sincerely, I never imagined that I would continue playing football professionally for this long,” Peters posted to Instagram. “I’ll always be appreciative of the time I’ve had, but now is the time to take on a fresh challenge. I’m not sure what’s coming up, but I’m excited to see where life takes me!”

He finishes with 336 tackles — 55 for loss — and 19 sacks in 164 career games (135 starts) with the Atlanta Falcons (2010-14), Arizona Cardinals (2016-21) and Jaguars. He missed the 2015 season with an Achilles injury.

Peters, who set a career-high with 50 tackles in 2018 with the Cardinals, was quite active off the field in Arizona.

He served as the Cardinals’ NFLPA rep and started a book club in Arizona in October 2019 as part of the Peters Educational Enrichment Project, which he began in 2012.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Peters took his book club, which was open to high schoolers around Arizona, virtual.

“We’re just trying to look for silver linings during this pandemic and I think it’s an opportunity to reach more kids and maybe even in a better format. For me, too, just because I can do these meetings with several different classrooms and really reach kids all over,” Peters said in May 2020.

The Falcons selected Peters in the third round of the 2010 draft out of Kentucky.

ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss and Reuters contributed to this report.