Well, this is awkward.
Tom Brady retired.
Again.
And everyone is talking about it.
Again.
You know how it is: You engage in a lengthy goodbye with someone — lots of handshaking and well wishing and slaps on the back and maybe you go in for the half-bro hug — and then 10 minutes later you pass them in the hall and, well, you just look at the floor, stuck for something to say. It’s like the ending of “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.” You still here?
A year ago Brady told the world he was retiring and everyone threw a big mushy sendoff party that included long, glowing tributes. Then six weeks later he said, never mind, he had changed his mind and he’s coming back.
You can see why Brady was a little sheepish this time about his second retirement announcement.
“Good morning, guys. I’ll get to the point right away,” Brady said via video on social media. “I’m retiring. For good. I know the process was a pretty big deal last time, so when I woke up this morning, I figured I’d just press record and let you guys know first. I won’t be long-winded. You only get one super emotional retirement essay, and I used mine up last year …”
This won’t be long either. We used up our tribute to him the first time but if you want to see it again, look here.
Everyone wrote gushy tributes to Brady worthy of Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Neil Armstrong. Not so much the second time.
You still here?
Brady, who’s 45, says he’s retiring “for good” this time, but we’ve heard this sort of thing previously. You could create an Athlete Hall of Fame from the group of athletes who unretired at least once — Rob Gronkowski, Brett Favre, Charles Haley, Marshawn Lynch, Randy Moss, Bronko Nagurski, John Riggins, Deion Sanders, Jason Witten, Reggie White, Ricky Williams, to name a few from the NFL. From the NBA: Dave Cowens, Bob Cousy, Kevin Johnson, Magic Johnson, George Mikan and Michael Jordan. Boxing: Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard; cycling: Lance Armstrong (a big mistake — that’s when he was busted for PEDs).
Gronkowski tweeted, “Tommy, since I already wrote you a long retirement message last year, this time I shall say, welcome to the 2x retired club.”
Brady, like so many others, wrote a good ending to his career the first time — and then botched it by coming back.
He played well at times this season, but not great, and his team struggled but ultimately made the playoffs, only to lose in the first round, 31-14, to the Cowboys.
“Thank you guys for allowing me to live my absolute dream,” Brady said upon retiring. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
That should raise a few eyebrows. As The Washington Post noted, Brady gave all of himself to football and it came at a price. His wife left him, with the children in tow, when he decided to unretire.
So, here we go again. A summation of Brady’s 23-year career (which includes two seasons in which he played a combined total of two games): NFL career records for passing yards (89,214 — or 50.7 miles) and touchdown passes (649) plus 212 interceptions, a 97.2 passer rating (second behind Aaron Rodgers), a record 10 Super Bowl appearances, a record seven Super Bowl wins (no one else has more than five), 58 game-winning drives and a record 251 regular-season wins.
Brady also will be remembered as a pioneer for the limits of age (actually, we really never saw the limit because he was still playing good football right to the end). Shortly after turning 38 in 2015, he told a friend in an email that he could play until he was 45 (he also said Peyton Manning, who is a year older than Brady, could play only two more years).
Brady did just as he stated; he played till the age of 45 and in his final season he threw for 4,694 yards, 25 touchdowns and nine interceptions — not great by his standards but very good by anyone else’s, and sensational for a 45-year-old (Manning, by the way, retired a year after Brady’s prediction, and looked every bit of his 39 years in his final season).
The Pro Football Hall of Fame lists 61 players who played in the NFL at the age of 40 or older; 46 of them were either quarterbacks, kickers or punters, the least athletic positions in the game (although the quarterback position is increasingly athletic in this era). Brady was clearly not an athletic quarterback — who can forget his famous 40-yard dash at the combine or his clumsy attempt to catch a pass in the Super Bowl? He thrived as a pocket passer and that no doubt prolonged his longevity.
Brady is not the oldest player to play the game. Quarterback-kicker George Blanda played until he was 48, but he spent the last nine years playing almost exclusively as a kicker, starting one game as a quarterback. Nobody has come close to playing the QB position — or any position, for that matter — longer or better than Brady.
