Coming to Terms with Brady’s Un-Retirement

Remember last summer, when, for a brief moment, it seemed like we had actually beaten covid? There were no variants, everyone was getting vaccinated, the vaccine was effective against illness and infection, and it was safe to take your mask off indoors? It was deemed “Hot Girl Summer”, and after a long, tough winter, there was finally hope in the air. Unfortunately, things didn’t last, as covid evolved, vaccinations waned, masks and political battles came back, and we’ve been stuck in the cycle ever since. Hot girl summer was never meant to be.

Well, that’s sort of how I feel about Tom Brady coming back out of retirement.* For the last month and a half, it seemed like we would finally witness an NFL without Tom Brady–something I haven’t witnessed in my entire time following football. The future was bright. The league was filled with awesome young QBs like Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, and Joe Burrow, and we were ready for a new generation of football.

Of course, even some of that time was filled with trepidation. Pretty much as soon as Brady retired, pundits took it upon themselves to speculate upon a possible return and where that might be. Such an idea was nerve-racking, and certainly possible considering who we’re talking about. But I managed to convince myself that it was unlikely to happen. After all, why would Brady retire and not really mean it at 44 years old? Any time off would be time wasted. A lot of speculative energy was focused on the “never say never” comments Brady made in an interview regarding a potential return, but such is a natural sentiment for retired football players. There’s always an itch to go back, and of course Brady would still be feeling a connection to the game so soon after he retired. I didn’t give it much credence.

A lot of pundits threw out the idea that Brady, by retiring, was trying to force a team change to the San Francisco 49ers, Brady’s childhood favorite team, and a roster that is seemingly ready to win now. But this was very clearly nothing more than speculation, and the idea Brady would have some weird desire to check off this seemingly random box of playing for his childhood favorite team considering all his existing accomplishments didn’t seem like it had anything behind it. At his age, every year is precious. Why go through the hassle of changing teams, learning a new system, and building chemistry with new players? Not to mention, the 49ers have a very clear plan to move forward with Trey Lance, their young QB that they gave up a ton to get. Some still are banking on Brady doing this move, and yes, anything is possible with him, but I don’t see it happening.

What Brady did do though, was announce that he’s coming back out of his incredibly short lived retirement to play at least another year for (presumably) Tampa. Said Brady on Twitter,

These past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come. But it’s not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I’m coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. Unfinished business LFG [let’s fucking go]

Brady’s retirement was a bit iffy to begin with. There had been whispers of him contemplating hanging it up throughout the season. Even for someone playing at as high a level as Brady did last year, 44 is still old. Two years in Tampa seemed a fitting amount of time at his age. At some point you get tired of taking hits, and Brady threw the ball a lot and took a lot of hits last year. The team wasn’t quite as good as the year before, and if you don’t feel you can compete for a championship, then there’s no point at that age. But as for the retirement itself, the actual news of it broke by league insiders, not by Brady. Some ran with it, and others waited. There were conflicting reports. Eventually, Brady announced it himself, claiming he was “not going to make [the] competitive commitment” anymore that the sport required of him. Implied (but not said) was that he no longer had it in him to do so at his age. But it was a weird round about way of saying it, and he never explicitly used the words “retired”. And remember that the announcement initially didn’t come from Brady himself. Was he waffling while it was announced, and ultimately made the decision once the cat was out of the bag? Or on the contrary, did the fact that it was announced by someone other than him lead him to not fully commit? (As many speculated, surely Brady would have a heavily produced retirement production for the occasion, and how dare Adam Schefter get in the way of that!)

So it was all a bit ambiguous, but it still made sense for a multitude of reasons. As I said, first and foremost, Brady is old, and he’d been doing this forever. Gisele has spoken openly about the frustration of Tom being essentially distracted for half the year and relaxing for the other half while she remains occupied with kids and chores. Tom is a big time businessman, and he has plenty of other projects to keep him occupied during retirement. And of course, he has absolutely nothing left to prove in the NFL, being widely considered the greatest of all time by almost everyone and retiring with 7 rings and as the all time passing leader in most categories.

But apparently that wasn’t enough. The dream of a post Brady NFL was a fantasy, and he’s coming back to play for the 2022 season. My initial response was that of a lot of negative emotions, let’s just say that. But at the forefront of those emotions for me is the question: Why? Why on earth retire for a month and a half at 44 only to come back? If he wanted to keep playing, why retire in the first place at all?

A quick aside: For those of you who are happy Brady is playing, great for you. But let me tell you that despite the obsessively glowing media coverage that has surrounded Brady his entire career, a large chunk of NFL fandom is not happy about this. And to be clear, I don’t hate Brady, nor do I not appreciate him. He’s a legacy player, and has been at the peak of his position for two decades. His achievements are well documented. I’ve seen them, I’ve enjoyed them, and they will be widely available for generations. But that time is over. It’s time for new players and new teams to shine, and a league with an omnipresent Brady at QB and his seemingly never ending dominance (partially due to him, partially due to a lot of good fortune that keeps on coming), is, in my opinion, a worse product.

Anyway, in trying to cope with all this, I’ve been racking my brain, talking to friends and also perusing the internet and pundits / insiders to figure out why on earth Brady pulled this dumb switcheroo. Seriously, retire for a month and a half? That’s even worse than all the unretirement shit Favre pulled. The media killed him for it, but of course they won’t do the same for Brady. So anyway, here are some of the possibilities I’ve mulled through as to why a 44 year old QB with nothing to prove came back after retiring for a month and a half. Some originated from me, others came from friends or pundits. You can decide on your own how plausible each is:

• Brady originally retired partially because of Gisele, but somehow got permission from her to come back. (I know this sounds sexist, but again, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility, and I don’t mean it in a sexist way. Gisele and Tom are close, she has voiced her frustrations with Tom playing for so long in the past, she presumably has a big say in his decisions, and she is probably the only hall of fame QB’s wife that is the primary earner of the household.)
  
• Brady wants his last game played to be a championship won in order to truly go out “on top”.
  
• Brady wants to break Peyton Manning’s single season passing yardage record of 5477. He came in third all time last season at 5316, just 161 yards short. To do so, he threw the second most passes in a single season all time with 719 attempts. He was just 8 short of the all time record of 727 by Matthew Stafford in 2012 (who was feeding Calvin Johnson in garbage time to break Jerry Rice’s receiving yards record). With the new 18 game season, maybe Tom will throw the ball on every down, 50 times a game, to break Peyton’s yardage record. He certainly was padding his yards with the attempts last year.
  
• Brady wants to break Peyton Manning’s record of 5 MVPs. Seeing as he currently only has 2, this is unlikely.
  
• Brady cannot live without the constant adulation of fans.
  
• Brady was upset his retirement wasn’t more talked about.
  
• Brady wants his eventual retirement announcement to not be upstaged by Adam Schefter like this one was.
  
• Brady wants to break Otto Graham’s record of 7 championships (pre Super Bowl era).
  
• Brady wants to prove to ME PERSONALLY that he is the GOAT, considering that I am one of the few remaining skeptics. (Shoutout to my roommate for this one.)
  
• Brady is just kind of a dick.

After entertaining it a bit more today, it seems most likely to me that Brady wanted to try out retirement and see how it felt. After doing so, he decided that he wasn’t ready to give the sport up just quite yet. Honestly, that’s not super surprising. Moving on from football is incredibly hard. These guys wake up and live by a set routine for all their life, and when faced with retirement, they don’t know how to approach it and don’t know what to do with themselves. It’s hard. If you can still play, might as well kick that can down the road. And Brady absolutely can still play.

In writing this, I’m not quite as bummed about it as I was initially. Maybe I just needed to get this all off my chest. Regardless, the reality is that Brady is going to play, and barring some unforeseen drop off that we have yet to see, he’s going to compete for a Championship and the Bucs are going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Will we ever be rid of Brady? Will I ever be able to enjoy his eventual retirement without the looming spectre that he’ll come back a zombie from the grave to win his 25th Super Bowl and lead the league in passing at 87?

Brady’s ability to play at this level at his age is, quite honestly, unnatural and somewhat inexplicable. Drew Brees, Eli Manning, Kurt Warner, Peyton Manning, and Brett Favre all retired because of injury, declining skill, or more likely, a combination of both. That hasn’t happened to Brady.

It’s always been easy for me to pick holes in Brady’s postseason resume. That doesn’t mean he’s not one of the GOATs. It doesn’t even mean he’s not the GOAT, he very well may be. But the notion that it’s undisputed and that he’s so incredibly far ahead of his peers in that category is what bothers me, as does the notion that his 7 rings are what separates him. Rings are a team accomplishment, and compared to the likes of, for example, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, he’s had a lot more luck and team help in that department, and that’s been consistent throughout his entire career. The schism between what has happened on the field and the narrative surrounding him is part of what frustrates me so much about his career. His first year in Tampa did not change this for me either. 2020 saw Brady struggle against winning teams in the regular season while playing poorly in the postseason and relying on his defense for a ring. A familiar formula, but no one seemed to see it that way. Instead, Brady was Superman, and single-handedly led the Bucs to a ring. Let’s not forget that they were essentially 4 deep at receiver, 3 deep at RB, 3 deep at TE, and led the league in passing a year prior.

BUT…

If there’s anything that led even the curmudgeonly-est of Brady skeptics like me to start to think that his GOAT case is hard to go up against, it was last season. At this point in his career, Brady’s skillset is, for the most part, as good as it’s ever been. He’s throwing a good deep ball, he’s going deep into progressions, and his pocket presence is top notch. Those were all weaknesses for Brady earlier in his career. He threw for 43 TDs and over 5300 yards, and even in a playoff loss where he was a bit off, he almost led a 27-3 comeback, his last throw being a beautiful deep TD to tie it up. Last season pretty much convinced me that Brady can keep playing at a top level for as long as he wants. That doesn’t mean all the narratives about his career are correct, but it sure makes it hard to dispute the type of legacy he continues to build at an age that his fellow hall of fame peers are spending on the golf course.

I don’t know how Brady has aged so well. He would tell you that it has to do with “The Brady Method”, his trademarked diet and exercise training regimen. But a lot of that stuff has been looked at by actual doctors and said to be pseudoscience. That’s without going into some of the questionable stuff that Brady’s personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, has said and done in the past. Brady isn’t out here figuring out something the rest of the medical community missed.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Brady doesn’t do other things that are good for his body. He has an obsessive focus on health and staying in shape. I’m pretty sure the dude goes to sleep at like, 7 PM. I’m pretty sure he hydrates like crazy and doesn’t eat bread. Maybe Brady is football’s Tiger Woods, a one of a kind freak who redefined what kind of athlete you could be at a typically unathletic position.

I think all that is part of it, but honestly, a lot of it is just luck. Football is a violent sport, and most bodies can only take so much. Brady’s got a hell of a work ethic and a hell of a personal commitment to excellence, but so have a lot of QBs. At some point, the dude is just lucky to make it this far. And I don’t think that aspect of his game is something we’ll likely see again, although who knows. For now, Brady is pretty much eternal.

In thinking about this article, I was planning on the ending being something about how tough things are in the outside world, how football is a respite and a distraction for me, and how Brady’s return and omnipresence just makes it so even this one sanctuary in my life isn’t free of strife. But after typing all this? Maybe I should just appreciate Tom Brady for being a once in a lifetime athlete and for exhibiting the type of greatness that is truly special. Maybe I’m actually lucky for getting to witness it.

Eh who am I kidding. I hope Brady gets the snot beat out of him next season.

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*This is just a tongue in cheek metaphor for what it feels like when brief optimism that things may be different is quickly bulldozed by familiar and ongoing frustrations. Obviously, there is no sports event that is remotely comparable to the massive pain and suffering that has been caused by covid, nor am I trying to even suggest such a thing. My heart goes out to the families and friends of the millions of lives lost from the unspeakable tragedy that is covid-19, and I can only hope that better days are on the horizon for this fight which we are truly all in together.

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