Joe Mixon's career winds down, Bengals era fully closes

Joe Mixon's football future has been murky for months, but the latest word out of his old locker room makes it feel final. According to NFL insider Aaron Wilson, Mixon has told former Bengals teammates flat out that his career is over, a gut-punch update for a guy who spent 7 seasons as Cincinnati's lead back.

Mixon was Cincinnati's second-round pick in the 2017 draft and turned into one of the more productive backs in franchise history, eventually helping power the Bengals' run to Super Bowl LVI. He left for Houston as a free agent, signed a 3-year, $27 million extension with the Texans, and looked like he had a few more solid years left in the tank.

Then the wheels came off. Mixon suffered a foot injury that Texans GM Nick Caserio called a "freak thing," with reports pointing to complications involving blood flow to the foot that required additional surgery. Whatever it was, it never healed right, and Mixon missed the entire 2025 season without ever getting close to the field.

Houston eventually released him this offseason at his own request, granting a non-football injury designation that saved the Texans roughly $8 million in cap space. That's usually the kind of move that signals a team has quietly moved on for good, and Wilson's report suggests Mixon has arrived at the same conclusion himself.

Wilson did leave a sliver of daylight open, noting a source close to Mixon mentioned there's "some hope" for a comeback, even while acknowledging it's probably over. That's a familiar shape for these stories — nobody wants to say retirement out loud until they absolutely have to, but the writing's been on the wall since the foot injury wiped out an entire season with no timetable ever materializing.

If this is really it, Mixon leaves as one of the more underrated backs of his era, a bruising runner who racked up big numbers in a run-heavy Bengals offense before catching a Super Bowl trip near the tail end of his Cincinnati tenure. Whether he officially announces retirement or just fades out unsigned, the Bengals chapter of his career already closed — and now, according to people who played alongside him, so does the rest of it.