NFL 23: NFL legend Tom Brady says his retirement this time is ‘for … – Code

February 1, 2023 News Editor

No drama, no ongoing ‘will he or won’t he’. Legendary quarterback Tom Brady got his NFL retirement right the second time around, writes JASON GAY.

Tom Brady got retirement right this time. Football’s handsome old man was self-aware enough to know that the public would have zero appetite for another protracted Tom Brady drama, another will he or won’t he, another churn of gossip involving teams that allegedly wanted him, and teams that allegedly did not.

Brady cut to the chase Wednesday a.m., in a smartphone video shot on a sand dune. Farewell and thank you — to his family, friends, teammates, to me and you, even.

This retirement, he said, was “for good.”

Short and sweet was the proper tack. After all, what is there to say about the football life of Tom Brady? It is the greatest NFL playing career anyone’s ever had, one of the great careers in all of team sports, period, nationally, globally, all of it, undisputed.

His legacy has long been secure, even as he added a boundary-pushing second-team mid-40s epilogue. He’s as good as there’s been, a defiant winner, a champion nonpareil. Seven Super Bowl rings as a player is a record that may stand forever.

If you rooted for Brady, you know how great he was. If you rooted against him, you know even more.

He’s been a running character for an entire football generation. In 23 seasons — 23 seasons, I can’t believe I’m typing that, it’s bonkers longevity for such a ferocious sport — he played the hero and villain with equal aplomb. Brady with the ball late in a close game was always someone’s fantasy. And always someone’s nightmare.

What’s funny about Retirement No. 2 is that it was the dark-horse pick. I was one of many who assumed Brady was coming back for more, that a sloppy season in Tampa Bay had left a bad taste, and he would manoeuvre for another last go. His name was tossed out as a potential answer for the Dolphins, Niners, Jets, Texans (I heard Texans!), Panthers, and even for his original employer, the Patriots. There was gossip he wasn’t even finished with Tampa.

He might not have had all these options, but he’d have at least one or two. The sudden turmoil with San Francisco’s injured quarterback room appeared too good to be true. Could the San Mateo kid come home to put on the scarlet and gold of his childhood obsession? Could that really happen?

In the end, a cooler head — with better hair — prevailed. Tom Brady decided to sign a deal with civilian life.

Good on him. The hardest thing for an elite athlete to do is to look athletic opportunity in the eye and say no more. It’s why players like Jim Brown and Barry Sanders are such rarities, because they opened the exit before anyone else thought they needed to.

More often, we see the great ones try to script themselves a perfect finish. And yet we can count the perfect finishes on one hand.

Brady won’t get one, either. I don’t think it matters. That ugh of a final season in Tampa Bay will soon be forgotten. It was a year too much, burdened by turmoil in his personal life with a mid-season divorce, and it’s wise for him to finally realise, at 45, that he can’t engineer the un-engineerable.

He gets it. What now?

He’s already set up a runway into television, with Fox. Sounds great, but I have no idea how this is going to go, and I suspect he doesn’t either. There’s never been an NFL player with Brady’s resumé in a TV booth; he has accomplished more than any talent he will ever critique. Historically, great players haven’t been the greatest analysts, because the greats fly above the cloudline, and are uninterested in the common business of criticising mortals.

Will he be Tom the Tactful? Or is there some edge he’s ready to unveil? After leaving New England and the Belichick Bubble, Brady showed a more pointed personality in interviews, and occasionally, tiny fangs. He’ll bring spectacular, current knowledge of the sport and the playing field. But being good means also getting into the muck.

Meanwhile, I know a certain portion of the population won’t be persuaded by Brady’s second retirement, either. Skeptics expect there will be a moment in the pre-season — or maybe even Week 10 — when Brady posts a video of himself flinging darts in his backyard and a torrent of buzz will commence. A contender is going to lose a starter to a torn something or other, and his name will be tossed into every rumour. What if he plays half a season? This is how it goes.

But hopefully it really is for good, as he says. Brady now pushes into TV, fashion and pickleball (he’s one of a bazillion celebrity investors) and recentering an existence he suspended to focus on 100 yards of turf.

If he can truly make time without playing football, I suspect he will enjoy it. No one has ever had a football life like Tom Brady. Now it’s time for the rest of it, gracefully.

– Wall Street Journal