Ex-Patriots center Stork now a graduate assistant coach at Southern Miss.

A year ago, Bryan Stork was snapping the ball to Tom Brady at Patriots camp.

Today, he's a graduate assistant who helps coach the Southern Mississippi football team and retired from the NFL.

“I just felt like it was the right time to walk away,” Stork told the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American. “Just for a better life. For my future family. Kids, things like that.”Stork, the starting center on the Patriots Super Bowl 49 champions, was released late in camp last year after a trade to the Redskins fell through when he failed his physical. A series of concussions going back to his college days at Florida State, from where he was drafted by the Pats in the fourth round in 2014, led him to end his NFL career.

Two years after winning a championship as a rookie, he walked away at 25.

“Listen, I’m not a doctor,” Stork said. “I don’t research those things. I’ve been through those things and I had to make the best decision for myself. And every player, at some point, will have to make that decision.”

Stork obtained his real estate license last year but said he missed football.

"I'd be sitting there when I’m supposed to be doing real estate stuff and I’m going over plays and going over the script for the day," he told The American. "So I was like, ‘All right, I need to be in football.'”