The San Francisco 49ers played the Indianapolis Colts on Monday Night Football. While it was a blowout win for the 49ers, the big storyline from this game was Philip Rivers, at 44 years old and five years after retirement, playing well in primetime.
Amid Rivers' return from retirement, there have been a few former quarterbacks who've shown interest, or mused about unretiring as well. Tom Brady is one of the more famous players to come up in such talks, but a new hard-to-believe player is now in the mix.
Former 49ers quarterback Steve Young recently entertained the idea of coming out of retirement and playing in the NFL again. While he won't actually do it, he said in the San Francisco Chronicle that he believes he could suit up one more time, 26 years after retiring.
Steve Young believes he could play QB 26 years after retirement
"I absolutely feel confident that I could take the snap, run the screen game, throw a ball in the flat, maybe throw a slant," Young said, "It's not like, 'put on the pads and go play.' Still, if it was 'Hunger Games'? If they said, you had to do this or die? Yeah, you could pull off something."
While Young's life won't be threatened into returning to the NFL, he still believes he could return and play quarterback in the league. This is completely unbelievable.
Young is 64 years old. He retired after the 1999 season. A lot of the players in the NFL weren't even alive the last time Young played a snap in the NFL.
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The left-handed quarterback hasn't played in the NFL in 26 years and has long since made the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was born in 1961 and was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the first round of the 1984 NFL Supplemental Draft.
He last played in the NFL at 38 years old, and yet, Young believes that if forced into returning to the NFL, he could pull it off.
While he won't be scrambling around like he used to, or be capable of throwing the ball deep down the field as he did during his playing days, Young believes he could run an NFL offense right now, despite being nearly three decades removed from his last snaps.
The hypothetical is a real question that can be asked now that Rivers is back in the NFL. While Young's absence from the league would be over five times as long as Rivers', he believes he could return and play the quarterback position in the NFL at 64 years old.
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