GREEN BAY, Wis. — Jordy Nelson is here to tell you there’s a reason NFL players need a mental break as much as a physical one after a grueling season.

For as impressive as the Green Bay Packers veteran wide receiver’s comeback season was in 2016 — he caught 97 passes for 1,257 yards and an NFL-best 14 touchdowns after missing all of 2015 with a torn right ACL — there were times during the year when Nelson was ready to call it quits altogether.

“If you ask my wife [Emily], I’ve told her five different things this past year,” Nelson said Tuesday morning during an appearance on ESPN Wisconsin’s Wilde & Tausch. “From, ‘Don’t ever let me play again this year,’ to ‘Don’t ever let me play after this year,’ to ‘OK, I can play another five years.’

“I fully understand why people tell you after the season to take some time off and think about it and let the body heal, because in the middle of it all, you have all sorts of things going through your head.”

Now, don’t turn this into the annual Brett Favre will-he-or-won’t-he retirement melodrama. Nelson, who turns 32 in May and was named the AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year at the NFL Honors event on Feb. 4, enjoyed his comeback way too much to hang ’em up now. He played through painful broken ribs in the team’s season-ending NFC Championship Game loss to Atlanta and said the team’s eight-game winning streak late in the year allowed him to get “to the point where I was really able to enjoy football again.”

But Nelson does recognize he’s closer to the end of his career than he is to the beginning, and he contemplates his football mortality more now than he did when he entered the league as a second-round draft pick out of Kansas State in 2008.

Nelson, who is one of only eight players who remain with the Packers from the Super Bowl XLV-winning team of 2010, said he, his wife and the couple’s two sons are also very happy living in Green Bay year-round.

“I have two years left on my deal,” Nelson said of the four-year, $39.05 million extension he signed before the 2014 season, which included an $11.5 million signing bonus. “It’d be great to finish that out and then see where the body is at, to be honest with you.

“I’m going to take it year-by-year, because it’s 100 percent on how the body feels. We love it up here, my son loves his school, everything’s been perfect. As long as the body can handle it and [the Packers] want me, I’ll play. But as soon as one or the other gives in, then I’ll be more than willing to walk away and move back on the farm and kind of disappear from earth.”

Editor’s note: Jason Wilde covers the Green Bay Packers for ESPN Wisconsin.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Titans coach Mike Mularkey said Marcus Mariota is doing well in his rehab from a broken fibula but said that the team plans to be “very cautious” with the quarterback, who will likely miss the team’s summer work.

“We texted back and forth last night. He’s on schedule,” Mularkey said Wednesday during an in-studio visit with The Midday 180 in Nashville.

“I saw some video of him in a pool, one of the treadmills that are now designed to keep the weight off but you can still walk. That was good to see, him walking on that treadmill. He’s right on schedule.”

Mularkey said he doesn’t have specific dates for benchmarks in recovery.

“I think we’re going to be really smart about how we handle him and probably be overly cautious,” he said.

Mariota suffered the injury to his right leg in a 38-17 Week 16 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

SAN DIEGO – The window for NFL teams to apply the franchise tag on players set to hit free agency begins on Wednesday and closes at 3 p.m. ET March 1.

For the Los Angeles Chargers, it provides an opportunity for general manager Tom Telesco to figure out what to do about pending free agent Melvin Ingram.

Ingram, a former South Carolina star, will be one of the top free agents in March if allowed to hit the market. With 18.5 sacks in the last two seasons, Ingram is tied for 12th in the NFL in that time period.

Paired with second-year pro Joey Bosa, the Chargers have one of the best pass-rusher tandems in the NFL.

Ingram turns 28 years old in April, and the Chargers have to figure out if he’s a good fit in new defensive coordinator Gus Bradley’s scheme, along with determining if he’s worth the long-term financial investment.

Olivier Vernon set the bar for pass-rushers by signing a five-year, $85 million contract that included $52.5 million in guaranteed money with the New York Giants in free agency last year.

ESPN’s Kevin Seifert provides all the pertinent information on the franchise tag here.

In an offseason where a potential trade of New England Patriots backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is a notable storyline, veteran receiver Julian Edelman paid him a high compliment by comparing his approach to that of two Green Bay Packers greats.

“The guy is a stud. He went out and played in the regular season and played very well. He has that kind of gunslinger-like confidence, that Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers kind of confidence,” Edelman said Tuesday night on NFL Network.

Garoppolo, whom the Patriots selected in the second round of the 2014 draft out of Eastern Illinois, is entering the final year of his contract.

With starter Tom Brady signed through 2019 and showing few signs of slowing down as he approaches his 40th birthday on Aug. 3, some have speculated that the Patriots — who also selected quarterback Jacoby Brissett in the third round of the 2016 draft — could consider trading Garoppolo this offseason.