Joe Haden thanks Cleveland one final time before retiring with Browns

Joe Haden officially retired Saturday in the city he’s always remembered as home.

Haden, the three-time Pro Bowl CB who spent the first seven years of his career in Cleveland, toured the halls of CrossCountry Mortgage Campus and watched a Browns practice for one final time as he’s set to sign a one-day contract to retire from the NFL. It’s the type of day Haden envisioned having in the summer, when he realized he had given the league his all and wanted to spend more time with his family after 12 years in the league.

But not before he came back to give a big “thank you” to a city that shared a mutual love.

“The main thing is basically I was drafted here, and the city embraced me when I was a kid,” Haden said. “I came here, I was just a fresh 21 years old, didn’t have any kids and I wasn’t married at the time, and just the city embraced me, and they showed me so much love.”

Haden, 33, was joined by his two kids, Joey and Jett, and his wife, Sarah, throughout the day as his career was celebrated in Berea. A seventh-overall draft pick by the Browns in 2010, Haden was voted to the Pro Bowl in 2013 and 2014 and garnered 19 interceptions across 90 games in a Browns uniform. He’s seventh all-time in NFL history with 155 pass breakups since the stat began to be tracked in 1994, and he leads the league in that category since he was drafted. He’s the Browns’ all-time leader with 101 pass breakups.

His favorite memory, he said, was his first multi-interception game of his career when he picked off Bengals QB Andy Dalton twice, one of which for a pick-six, in Week 11 of 2013. That game, however, ended in a 40-21 loss, one of many the Browns had in Haden’s tenure.

Cleveland was 29-83 with Haden on the roster, but the team’s record never bursted Haden’s positive energy that made him such a lovable figure for the fanbase.

Haden’s love for the city was instant, too, and extended far beyond the Browns. His first memories as a Cleveland resident weren’t from when he had a helmet on,…