Kyle Long walked out of Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on a cool February night in 2021 when the realization hit him.One year removed from his retirement as an offensive lineman for the Chicago Bears, Long was now building a media career at CBS Sports and had just finished covering his first Super Bowl. He strolled the parking lot with Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher, his now-colleague, the chaos from the day slowly dissipating around them. But there was one aspect of the game Long couldn’t get out of his head.He turned to Cowher: “Maybe I’m a guy that can help Patrick Mahomes.”The Tampa Bay Buccaneers battered the Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback in their 31-9 Super Bowl 55 win that day. Behind a makeshift offensive line, Mahomes was sacked three times and was pressured on 29 of his 56 dropbacks, the most of any quarterback in Super Bowl history. For the first time as a pro, Mahomes lost a game by double digits, and his team never scored a touchdown.Watching this, with a press pass on instead of pads, left Long infuriated. The next day, he sent Mahomes a message.“There should have been a million offensive linemen that called him and said, whatever you need, I’ll do it in jeans and boots,” Long said in a conversation with The Athletic this summer. “That’s pretty much what the message was that I sent him. And he was like, get a hold of Andy (Reid), let’s make this thing happen.”One month later, Long signed with the Chiefs. Retirement postponed.Aaron Donald comes out of retirement to rejoin an 'all-in' RamsNate AtkinsNothing beats an underdog story. But the story of unretirement comes pretty close, a narrative complete with anticipation, pressure and perseverance. This week, three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald announced his return to the Los Angeles Rams more than two years after he retired from football. Donald, 35, makes a Rams roster that was already the Super Bowl favorite look invincible. That is, if he can return to the form that made him a future Hall of Famer in the first place.Players coming back, despite their ages or injuries, can humanize even the biggest stars. Michael Jordan was already a three-time NBA champion when he retired to try his hand in baseball. Then he said, “I’m back,” and embarked on another NBA three-peat. Michael Phelps won 18 Olympic gold medals when he retired after the 2012 Games; he came back and won five more in 2016.Some might say these stars should be satisfied. Let them ride off into the sunset and make room for the next generation. But for athletes wired on competitive drive, there comes a time when more than medals, rings or accolades are on the line. It gets personal.Lindsey Vonn returned to competitive skiing at 40 in the lead-up to the 2026 Winter Olympics, citing a deep love for the sport, speed and competition. She made it to Cortina d’Ampezzo, but crashed during her downhill run and was airlifted out with a devastating injury. This summer, tennis great Serena Williams returned to the singles court at Wimbledon after almost four years away, where she lost in the first round and injured her knee. At 44 years old, she’s set to return to the U.S. Open this month, competing in doubles with her sister Venus, even if Wimbledon didn’t go her way.In football, returning from retirement comes with added challenges. The physicality of the game puts players on tight timelines, and any extended period away only makes it harder to get back into game shape.Tight end Rob Gronkowski came out of a one-year retirement to join his old teammate Tom Brady in Tampa Bay in 2020, winning that ring that Long watched from the crowd. Two years later, Brady announced his own retirement, only to backtrack 40 days later and return for one final season at 45 years old, becoming the oldest quarterback to start and win a game.Quarterback Brett Favre had an even longer grapple with retirement. Favre first retired after the 2007 season with the Green Bay Packers and then following the 2008 season with the New York Jets. He returned to the field both times.“I don’t know for me if it’s ever easy,” Favre told reporters, announcing his official retirement after the 2010 season with the Minnesota Vikings. “I’m sure throughout this year the comment has been made that, ‘We’ll wait and see in August or September,’ and that’s fine. It’s time. I’m OK with it.”Just as recently as 2025, the Indianapolis Colts called up 44-year-old Philip Rivers to revitalize their injury-riddled quarterback room, five years removed from Rivers’ last snap.Would a return to Los Angeles Rams diminish Aaron Donald's NFL career?Robert MaysSo, what fuels a comeback? And how does a player prepare for a return to the gridiron? Each athlete’s motivation is unique. But across interviews with multiple NFL players, one thing became clear: a desire to forgo the second-guessing for a second chance, no matter how it ends up.“I left with a little bit of almost a bad taste in my mouth the first time I retired just because (I thought): Was this the right decision? Was it not? I was just so iffy on it,” said former linebacker Kyle Emanuel, who retired after the 2019 season with the Los Angeles Chargers and rejoined the league one year later. “The fact that I was able to come back, get another year, regardless if it went the way I envisioned or not, I think it was huge for me.”Tight end Darren Waller was halfway into his 2023 season with the New York Giants when he began to seriously consider retirement. He contemplated his decision in the months following that season, telling The Athletic’s Dan Duggan at the time: “It’s really the idea of signing up for another journey. It’s tough, it’s long, it requires a lot. And if you’re not fully bought into every single thing of the process, it’s going to be tough.”Multiple athletes shared the same sentiment. Why return to the game if you can’t — mentally, physically, emotionally — give it your all? Reflecting this summer, Waller reiterated the pressure felt during an NFL season.“The game’s fast. You’re moving from one thing to the next,” he said. “Your nervous system’s always heightened because you’ve got to be ready for so much pressure, stress, pain, high highs. So, it was a big adjustment for me to slow my life down the way that I had to and needed to.”Waller announced his retirement in June 2023 at 31. Injuries caused him to miss 19 games over his last three years. Waller also battled a drug and alcohol addiction early in his career, and he was suspended the entire 2017 season for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy. But no factor played a more impactful role in Waller’s decision to step away than his desire to look inward.“This life that looks good on paper and is — by all means — successful by the common American definition of success. But it’s like, it doesn’t feel right or feel aligned within me,” Waller said. “Everybody would choose my life from the outside looking in, but I am not necessarily choosing my life for myself. So what needs to change? I feel like that required me to remove myself from performing to slow everything down, strip a lot of things away and just walk through that process.”Emanuel, the linebacker who retired after four seasons with the Chargers, was almost moved to tears sitting at his locker after his team’s 2019 divisional-round loss to the New England Patriots, thinking: “Was that my last game?” For a former fifth-round pick whose contract had just expired, retirement felt like something always lurking in his rearview mirror.“You hear so much when you’re in the NFL: It’s short-lived. You just never know. Injuries happen. You get cut,” Emanuel said. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next. That part of it was always on my mind, actually.”As Long remembers it, retirement wasn’t a common topic discussed between teammates in the locker room. It silently crept around as what Long called the “Grim Reaper,” usually someone from the scouting or player personnel department, who would ask for certain players to meet the coach in his office during roster decision time, like training camp or the end of a season. But internally, for Long, contemplating retirement came back to a single mantra: “They always say if you don’t recognize yourself on film, that’s the day you should pack your s—.”“I was so beat up, and I never gave myself time to recover; I was always playing,” Long said. “There’s no void in the calendar where you can just take a breath and take a beat and get your body right.”Speaking to reporters after announcing his comeback, Donald expressed confidence in his ability to play at a high level. Donald ramped up workouts in the months leading up to his final decision and reconnected with the speed trainer he had worked with since high school. “Once you choose to come back, you’re all the way back in,” he said. “You can’t be halfway in it. You have to be all the way in it.”Often the biggest, strongest players on the field, linemen take the hardest hits day in and day out. Staying in football-ready shape, at the size and speed of a lineman, is uniquely challenging. Long said he weighed around 330 pounds during his prime days as an NFL player. After spending the 2020 season in retirement, he said he was down to 270 pounds.That meant that when he decided to come back, there was work to do. He remembers calling one of his former teammates, Taylor Boggs, to train. Long appreciated Boggs’ work ethic, and the two of them worked out around Boggs’ cul-de-sac in Arizona over the summer, pushing sleds and carrying dumbbells. No elite training academy, Long said, “just moving heavy s—.”“Offensive linemen, we’re different. We’re like Wagyu beef,” Long said. “If you want the best quality beef, if you want the tastiest bite, you got to treat us a little bit and you got to get us big. I’m 300 (pounds) walking around right now. People say, ‘Are you sick? You look skinny.’ I was 330 pounds when I played, and you have to maintain the weight.”Getting football-ready is also about more than being successful on the field. It’s about avoiding injury.Center Frank Ragnow attempted to come out of retirement to join the Detroit Lions midway through the 2025 season, five months after he announced his farewell from the game at 29. The return of the four-time Pro Bowler excited the Detroit fan base, until the Lions medical team discovered a Grade 3 hamstring strain during Ragnow’s physical that kept him sidelined.In June, Ragnow opened up about his comeback attempt at an event in Michigan, telling reporters he was trying to will himself to play, “and my body was telling me otherwise.” The “romantic” comeback story he imagined for himself turned out too good to be true.Frank Ragnow tried to come out of retirement last year with the Lions. His body had other ideas. (Nic Antaya / Getty Images)“I tried to avoid games, tried to distract myself from it, and then I started watching games, and that’s when I felt guilt,” Ragnow said. “(Quarterback) Jared (Goff’s) getting hit, that’s my guy; those are my guys, and they’re struggling. And then I made a bonehead decision and tried to get ready to play and got hurt. That was tough.”Mental prep is another key factor. In his year off, Waller said he spent time in therapy. He went on retreats and solo trips across the world, spending time in nature and developing his sound as a musician. He said the time away helped him find validation outside of football — something he struggled with as a young player.Still, a comeback didn’t cross Waller’s mind until just a few weeks before he signed with the Miami Dolphins in July 2025. Waller said the pieces seemed to fall in place after he watched the Dolphins trade tight end Jonnu Smith to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and his pre-existing relationship with then-offensive coordinator Frank Smith, who was Waller’s tight end coach with the Oakland and Las Vegas Raiders, helped make the Sunshine State feel like a natural fit.Waller flew in for training camp, embracing his new role as the 33-year-old veteran teammate. And his leadership was tested early after a hip injury during camp sidelined him through the first three games of the season.“This isn’t the start to my comeback journey that anybody would have written in a storybook. But that’s kind of just how life is,” Waller said. “All of that was worth it for as good as it felt coming back in that first game.”During his first game, Waller scored two touchdowns and led the Dolphins to their first win of the season.“I haven’t played in almost two years, and I actually feel like I’m riding a bike and I can still take a game over,” Waller said. “That’s as good as you can ask for as a player.”Waller played in nine total games for the Dolphins during the 2025 campaign, recording 24 catches, 283 yards and six touchdowns. He spent much of this offseason as a free agent before signing last month with the Carolina Panthers.“I’ve been training since the day after the Super Bowl. I’m not doing all this for nothing,” Waller said before signing with the Panthers. “I feel like my body is definitely way more calloused than it was going into the Dolphins last year. It has not been two years since I last sprinted. I sprinted today in the house.”Darren Waller returned to the NFL last season after a brief retirement and recently signed with the Carolina Panthers to play another year. (Matt Kelley / Getty Images)But not every comeback gets adorned with touchdowns and playing time. While second-guessing his retirement decision, Emanuel heard from his agent that a coach had asked about him at the 2020 Scouting Combine. It piqued his interest, and Emanuel decided he would give the league another go, but team visits were a challenge as the COVID-19 pandemic hit its peak.Eventually, the Raiders flew Emanuel out two weeks into their training camp, and after meeting with then-GM Mike Mayock and head coach Jon Gruden, Emanuel was back on an NFL roster. He described those initial days as a mental grind, learning a new system around teammates who were already familiar with each other and the playbook. But it was in the small moments where Emanuel found what he missed most.“I knew I would miss the guys in the locker room. I knew I would miss competing on Saturdays or Sundays. I never thought I would miss training camp,” Emanuel said. “I still remember texting one of my buddies in there, calling him and telling him that that was not something I expected.”Emanuel spent most of his time on the Raiders’ practice squad during the 2020 season. He was traded to the Houston Texans in October, where he played in seven games. He never officially retired again, but he did find his place off the field. Emanuel now works as a color commentator for his alma mater, North Dakota State University, and has a full-time job in construction. He has a more relaxed mindset, knowing his football days are behind him.“It wasn’t like there were a bunch of teams knocking at my door,” Emanuel said. “I was still open to it, potentially playing again, but it didn’t happen, and I was OK with that.”For as exciting as a comeback can be, it’s also unpredictable. Injuries and learning curves are part of the game, no matter a player’s experience, success, or motivations.Long’s comeback in Kansas City was derailed by a knee injury he suffered during OTAs in June. He started the season on the physically unable to perform list. By season’s end, due to the lingering injury and the emergence of rookie Trey Smith, Long did not play a single game snap for Kansas City. So, did his comeback scratch the itch?“Not quite,” Long said, candidly.Now back to his analyst gig at CBS, Long said he’s thankful to have found a career that keeps him close to football. And even if his comeback season didn’t come with highlight plays or a Super Bowl ring — he’ll remind you the Chiefs won back-to-back Lombardi trophies in the two years following his second retirement — he knew where he needed to be next.“I was aware that this was probably the end,” Long said. “I did exit meetings in Kansas City, but coach (Andy) Heck wanted me back, the offensive line coach. They were excited to have me. I let him know, look, I’m going home. I have to be able to shut it off. I’m gonna shut it off. I’m gonna be a dad now.“Now here we are. It’s four years later. I just sent (center) Creed Humphrey and (right guard) Trey Smith a picture of my 4-year-old, and I was like, ‘Remember when this was a little bump?’”For Long, it was time for Dad-mode.For Donald, it’s time for another shot on the field. When he initially retired, Donald said: “I’m complete. I’m full.” He’s not the first to step back and challenge those emotions.The plot is storybook-worthy: Donald uniting with a roster equipped with quarterback Matthew Stafford, off his first MVP award, and reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett, all culminating with the backdrop of Super Bowl 61 in the Rams’ home SoFi Stadium. But the mental clarity of giving it one more go will ultimately define Donald’s return, no matter the successes or failures.It will be thrilling, yet unpredictable. That’s just how comebacks go.