| Tom Brady is not going to be playing in the NFL next season. Or ever again. Let that sink in for a moment. Brady, the greatest quarterback of all time and with seven Super Bowl rings and 22 seasons to his name, is done with football. You had a couple of days to get used to it, sure, after the initial reports and mild pushback from last weekend, but now it’s confirmed. You won’t get to watch him anymore, in whatever way you preferred. It’s over. Be honest now, whoever you root for, you’ll miss him. “This is difficult for me to write, but here it goes: I am not going to make that competitive commitment anymore,” Brady wrote on Instagram on Tuesday morning, ending a brief period of speculation following initial reports last Saturday. “I have loved my NFL career, and now it is time to focus my time and energy on other things that require my attention.” For some, the staple method was to cheer against him, to celebrate his rare stumbles and to sit fearfully as he found a way to roll to yet another win. For others, it was grudging appreciation of first a legend in the making and then an icon already made. He played this season with more Super Bowls to his name than every single franchise in the NFL, and yep, that’s a real stat. For fans of the New England Patriots and more recently the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he was the closest thing to a sporting god, a man who made the impossible come true, over and over. He thumbed his nose to logic, convention, probability and, most of all, time. But that’s it now. On Saturday, it was reported by ESPN’s Jeff Darlington and Adam Schefter that Brady was retiring. Then it was a case, briefly, of “not so fast,” with even Brady’s father saying a decision had not been finally made yet. Tuesday’s statement was confirmation of what had come to seem like the inevitable. After 365 games, his last ended in a defeat, to the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round last Sunday. His last drive, appropriately, ended in a touchdown, a handoff to Leonard Fournette to tie that game and which realistically should have sent it to overtime. There won’t be any more Brady on your television screens, at least not in uniform. Just like when Michael Jordan finally packed up his basketball uniform, Brady’s departure will be seen as a defining point between eras. In truth, he was around for long enough that his career spanned more than one defined period of football history. There were some rumblings over his possible retirement to emerge last weekend, but Saturday’s revelation was still a surprise. Maybe we should have seen it coming. In hindsight, all the clues were there. When Brady first moved to the Buccaneers, it was touted as a two-year thing. During this winter, the guy put out a documentary series about the span of his career, for goodness’ sake. Of course, he was going to go now, at the age of nearly 45, we just got blinded to it — and for good reason. Brady defied the norm so completely that it just seemed like he would go on forever. We thought we’d gotten to know him better in the fascinating final two years of his career, as he gave himself a makeover of sorts. It was hard for non-New Englanders to do anything but hate him during those glory years, especially the second batch of Super Bowl wins when the Patriots had mastered winning so effectively, it just didn’t seem fair. But when he bolted for the Florida sunshine and decided to go to the franchise with the worst winning percentage in American sports, the story shifted. Suddenly, Brady was far more open, freed from the built-in “us-against-them” nature of the Patriot Way. The choice of his first interviewer after signing — Howard Stern — showed Brady wasn’t afraid to take some bold new steps and bathe in a little limelight. He joined Twitter, willingly became a bit of a troll, and showed a humorous side that involved a (expletive)-ton of cussing, especially in the “Man in the Arena” documentary series. As he goes, there is so much to remember. He has been part of some transcendent moments that will never cease to be replayed. He was at the heart of the Tuck Rule game, he got the Pats in position for so many of Adam Vinatieri’s clinching field goals, he watched in disbelief at David Tyree’s catch, got mad at the Philly Special, screamed his head off at Malcolm Butler’s goal-line pick, led that unfeasible comeback from 28-3, and, a year ago showed Patrick Mahomes how hard it is to repeat. Brady loved to win and perhaps even more so, hated to lose. He absolutely despised it. Even when he became a more garrulous talker in Tampa, he could barely get through a couple of minutes worth of media conference chatter on the back end of a defeat. When the Patriots fell short to the New York Giants in the Super Bowl a second time in 2012, he sat in the locker room and wept freely, a towel over his head, Robert Kraft’s consoling arms around his shoulders. For Brady, what was possible was always a moving target. Past experience had taught him never to lose belief. The finest quarterback to have ever lived was a backup on his freshman team. He was locked in a battle with Drew Henson at Michigan because Hanson seemed to have more natural talent. And, of course, as we all know, he was a sixth-rounder, pick 199, then a fourth-string, then a second-string, then a temporary seat-warmer for Drew Bledsoe. And then just more and more success, all the way to the status that fits the exploits, the greatest of all. For now, and surely for a long, long while into the future. Because it is an outrageous target to fathom, seven Super Bowls. Mahomes is only 26 but even if he was to add another ring in two weeks’ time, Brady’s mark would still seem like a mountain with a peak far beyond sight. Physically, Brady was clearly still capable of giving it another go. He took the Bucs to a 13-4 record, to the fringe of the NFC title game and was a lead contender for the MVP award until Aaron Rodgers’ body of work presumably took it away. Mentally, the competitive fire seemed to burn still, perhaps not as impenetrably as ever, but bold enough to take all those hits from younger men and to carry on putting in all that work. It was just time. Time to go. Don’t get confused though, in the battle of Tom v. Time, Tom won. As his wife Gisele Bundchen said 12 months back, he had nothing left to prove. He has three children and the prospect of all those extra days and moments, fully retired and with no obligation, must seem incredibly enticing. School runs, sports practices, movie nights and beach trips will seem extra special when your profession has enforced time away for a chunk of each year, since before they were all born. And so Brady leaves, a cultural icon and a sporting legend, with one final head-shaker of a question remaining. Who gets to retire having done it for longer than anyone before him, having broken all kinds of freakish records, yet while still in their prime? Just him. |
