Kurt Warner Slams Door On NFL Comeback Rumors, Says He’s Too Old To Play

Kurt Warner decided he was just too old to make any attempt at a comeback.

Sentiment was rising among Arizona Cardinals fans, and even some players, for the 43-year-old Warner to return and solve a quarterback dilemma for the team he once led to the Super Bowl.

The Cardinals had already suffered the loss of starter Carson Palmer earlier this year when they had yet another quarterback go down. In Thursday night’s win over the St. Louis Rams, backup Drew Stanton left with a knee injury, leaving the team with third-stringer Ryan Lindley.

During the game, Kurt Warner joked on Twitter that he would put on his jersey and cleats and make a return if the team needed him, but in the days after that, the jokes led to rumors that Warner could indeed be thinking about a comeback.

On Sunday, he put those rumors to rest, saying that he was just too old to come back.

“I tell you what. It’s funny. I’ve actually thought about it,” Warner said on the NFL Network’s GameDay Morning. “Because you guys, we talked about it at the game, is how bad I felt for the Arizona Cardinals and if they lost their quarterback again, that I actually contemplated.”

He added, “But in the green room, I kept coming back to the fact that the last time I played I was already old and slow and now I’m just older and slower and how crazy and stupid that would be to even consider that I could actually.”

Warner said he was actually approached by Cardinals coach Bruce Arians, but that both realized the comeback wouldn’t really work.

“As fun as it sounds and as neat of a story as it could be, yeah,” Warner said on KTAR FM during the week. “I have to be the one that understands really what this would entail and to be realistic that there’s no way I can do it.”

Deciding to stay retired could actually help Kurt Warner in one way. Though a comeback would have made a feel-good story, but staying retired he will be eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame two years earlier, and is almost assured to get in on the first try.