Rob Gronkowski speaks from experience. He has played each of his 11 NFL seasons with Tom Brady. He has retired once and returned.

If anyone in football is clued in to whether Brady could also leave and then return, it’s his longtime tight end — and yes, he thinks it will happen.

“The guy can play at any age,’’ Gronkowski told USA TODAY Sports on Friday. “If he’s 50 years old he can still come back. I think he’s going to come back but in a couple of years. The guy’s a beast. He can play anytime.”

Brady has said he is stepping away at 44 and after 22 seasons — and while still, somehow, at the top of his game. His Feb. 1 announcement was met with shock — Brady had just led the league with 5,316 passing yards, his most ever, and his 43 passing touchdowns was tops in the NFL — and some skepticism from former teammates.

“You wouldn’t be surprised” if Brady comes out of retirement, Julian Edelman told NBC Sports. “I don’t know how he’s going to feel in six months when he’s sitting there.”

Brady, too, has left the door open. He thinks — not knows — he is ready to say goodbye to the game after winning seven rings and can spend more time with his family. But he has resisted retirement for so long, and the greatest quarterback in NFL history is not fully convinced his career is over.

“You never say never,” Brady, when asked about a potential return, said on his SiriusXM show, “Let’s Go!” last week. “At the same time I know that … I feel very good about my decision. I don’t know how I’ll feel six months from now, [if it will] change, it most likely won’t. But I try to make the best possible decision I can in the moment, which I did this last week.”

As for the 32-year-old Gronkowski, who already quit the game for a season while unhappy in New England only to return in 2020 for Tampa Bay to catch passes from Brady again, he has not made a decision yet on whether he will play a season without his buddy.

Gronk, coming off a solid 55-catch, 802-yard, six-touchdown campaign, will be a free agent in March and has sounded open to catching passes for Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow. But his career thus far has pretty closely mirrored Brady’s.

“I’ll figure all that out in the future,’’ Gronkowski told USA TODAY Sports. “Let everything play out, then make a move. So I’m just relaxing, letting my body heal, have a good time, have some laughs.”