Imagine watching a 49-year-old quarterback running through the gridiron as the offensive line tries its best to keep the pocket from collapsing. It may not be an interesting storyline for many. But if we put Tom Brady as that 49-year-old quarterback, it all starts to make sense. However, New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh knows the problems with bringing the former quarterback back into the chaos of the trenches.

“If Tom Brady decided he wanted to come back from retirement, and he actually could, which I doubt for one second he could, no matter what he thinks,” Harbaugh told the media. “I don’t think he’d be ready the first week as much as you might wanna put him in. It wouldn’t be in the best interest to play him first week. There’s a lot of things going on there.”

Well, even if Brady comes back and somehow ends up on the Giants’ roster, Harbaugh would put him as a backup. In his stead, he’d deploy J.J. McCarthy as the starting quarterback. McCarthy is a second-year quarterback and has played only two games in the 2026 season. Last year, he completed 140 passes for 1,632 yards and scored 11 touchdowns. This year, he has yet to start a game. But he has already completed 11 passes for 243 yards and scored one touchdown. 

Brady has already spent 23 seasons with the NFL and has returned from retirement once before. Through these seasons, he completed 7,753 passes for 89,214 yards and scored 649 touchdowns. He further added 1,123 rushing yards and 28 rushing touchdowns to his record. 

Through a social media post in 2023, the seven-time Super Bowl winner announced that he had already played his final NFL game. However, recently Brady was apparently looking for a comeback. However, he seemed to have more affinity for his life after retirement. 

“I actually have inquired, and they don’t like that idea very much,” Brady said while promoting his World Cup advertisement campaign with Ferrero. “We explored a lot of different things, and I’m very happily retired. Let me just say that, too.” 

Meanwhile, biographer Lars Anderson, author of “Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness,” believed that the seven-time Super Bowl winner might still want to come back and play in the trenches. 

“I think he wishes he got number eight,” Anderson said in a conversation with Front Office Sports’ Bridget Condon. “I think he wishes circumstances could have been different and he could have kept playing.” 

But there’s another hurdle to his return apart from a deteriorating and aging body. Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer previously pointed out that the NFL’s rulebook prevents minority owners from being employed by the teams unless they are directly related to the principal owner. This rule was brought into effect to prevent teams from using equity to entice people to join them. And that prevents Brady from making another comeback to the gridiron. 

“I loved being out there in the flag game,” Brady said. “I loved not getting hit. I’ve got a lot of really fun things I’m involved in. It’s never doing to get old throwing passes to incredible athletics on the field, but if anything, that game reconfirmed to me that I’m very happy in my retirement.”

Harbaugh’s blunt reality check puts the final nail in the coffin of any lingering Tom Brady comeback fantasies. Between the brutal physical demands of the modern NFL and strict league ownership rules, Brady’s playing days are over. But it’s a different story if we consider flag football.