Zach Orr weighing return to NFL months after retiring with spinal condition

Zach Orr may not be forced to call it a career, after all.

The former Baltimore Ravens linebacker revealed in an appearance on "Good Morning Football" on Wednesday that he's weighing the possibility of returning to the NFL just months after retiring with a spinal condition.

Orr, who was coming off a breakout second-team All-Pro season when he announced the decision to walk away at age 24 in January, explained that seeking further medical opinions has led to more positive evaluations.

"I had my mind made up," Orr said, according to Mike Garafolo of NFL Network. "I was like man, the doctors told me I was done. This is a serious issue. So I'm going to leave it alone. But I just kept hearing that from multiple people and some were telling me to just go check out and seek out some more opinions and things like that and come to find out my condition, it is rare - .01 percent of the people have what I have - but there's no actual evidence or facts that I'm at a higher risk than any other player. And it's actually been documented that a college player who had the exact same thing that I have that returned to play with no problems."

As Garafolo added, citing confirmation from a league spokesman, Orr would be an unrestricted free agent if he indeed makes a return to football.

Baltimore would have had an easy path to keeping Orr around were it not for the retirement, as he was scheduled for restricted free agency after completing his third season. Working under the assumption that his career had come to an early end, though, the Ravens neither extended him an RFA tender or placed him on the reserve/retired list.

Orr served as a reserve linebacker for each of his first two seasons before stepping into the starting lineup for all 15 appearances in 2016. The opportunity led to immediate results, as he finished the year with a team-high 132 tackles, three interceptions, and five passes defensed.