FOOTBALL’S GREATEST STORY IS A WRAP — NOW, HOW DOES TOM BRADY COPE?
He can continue to define a nation and remain ultra-relevant but only if his competitive inferno is stoked by what’s next, and a broadcasting career might not satisfy him in cold-turkey withdrawal
When you’re the most decorated and fawned-over player in the history of America’s most prosperous and popular sports league, your legacy doesn’t end at retirement. Tom Brady is the prom king of our lives. We want to know what’s next, how it ends, whether he’ll be fulfilled in the broadcast booth or need something more to satisfy a competitive furnace that won’t extinguish because he finally walked away from pro football after 23 seasons.
This is a man who has helped define a nation, spanning its most complex and socially inflamed times, and it’s important he not just fade off in his 50s and 60s. He has taught the lessons of fierce defiance, devouring the absurdity of being drafted 199th in 2000, proving he could perform at a maximum level into his mid-40s, following his independent compass even when his wife and mother of his kids divorced him for playing too long. He did much more than win a record seven Super Bowls and shatter NFL marks for career passing yards, touchdown passes and too many others to mention. He showed us how to persevere, recalibrate, outlast time, blow away conventional term limits and, for those who cared to test the yuk quotient of avocado ice cream, how to eat and live better through his wellness concoctions.
He impacted generations, smothered our senses and dominated autumns and winters while somehow avoiding Brady Burnout in a culture of social-media-fed immediacy. He knew it was time to leave — and his retirement is final this time, despite the doubts of shallow cynics — before his passing skills continued to regress and serious injury risks increased. As Gisele Bundchen asked him on a confetti-strewn field in Tampa two years ago, after he won a seventh title when no other player has won more than five, “What more do you have to prove?” Of course, he should have retired then, and while we can ask if he lost his marriage because he didn’t, maybe Brady was so obsessed with his labor of love — an addiction that engulfs many of us — that he never should have wed a supermodel with her own dreams.
“Good morning, guys. I’ll get to the point right away,” Brady said on video from Miami Beach, self-publishing from the sands near his high-rise Surfside condo. “I’m retiring. For good.”
Please don’t insult this moment in history, this passage between NFL preeminence and his future, by dwelling on his second decision to retire in a year. Look ahead, would you? He’s not coming back. He can’t play at a high level anymore, as his final season with the Buccaneers painfully showed, his body disturbingly gaunt and his throws skittish. He wants to be a father, first. But like Michael Jordan, who spoke of picking up his children at school and was off to the Washington Wizards before we knew it, Brady simply can’t stop competing like he’s tossing out a pair of underwear. He can’t ignore a heart beating since his teens. He doesn’t turn off the juice like a shower faucet. He is a prisoner of his self-perpetuated madness, as he acknowledged late in his ESPN+ series, “Man in the Arena.” He broke down, speaking about his father, Tom Sr., and his relationship with his own kids.
“When I think about being a dad, I think about him, because of what my dad meant to me. ... I know I'm not as good of a dad as my dad's been to me,” Brady said. “I think maybe what I'd wish for my children (is) to find something they really love to do like I have, but I think I've taken it to an extreme, too. You know? There are imbalances in my life. I hope they don't take things as far as I've taken them.
“There's a torment upon me that I don't wish upon them.”
So, how does he carry on with that torment? How does he nourish his raw desires while implementing new life balances? Jordan became an NBA team owner, but Brady has voiced no desire to own an NFL franchise or join a front office as a general manager. He has rejected politics, despite days when a red “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” cap hung in his locker between golf dates with Donald Trump. His business empire, which has included an ill-advised association with Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX debacle, might need a refresher if not a reboot.
When a man was possessed enough to count down days before the next Super Bowl on his neon gym clock … when he was driven to drink 25 glasses of electrolyte-infused water a day … when he smashed tablets and screamed at teammates on sidelines … when he ate legumes and seeds the way the rest of us eat croissants … when he cheated on his diet only with chocolate made of agave and cabbage juice … when he craved an eighth championship for no good reason but competitive greed … no, he can’t just up and retire without cold-turkey withdrawal.
Tom Brady is a junkie. Fortunately, he does not gamble or abuse opioids, far as we know. How does he feed his fix? He will start in the media racket, a curious choice for someone who has insulated himself for decades and once admitted on LeBron James’ TV show “The Shop,” that he isn’t entirely truthful with reporters “90 percent” of the time. Fox Sports would love to have him on the studio set a week from Sunday in Arizona, but is Brady ready to attend a Super Bowl without a No. 12 jersey to wear? The world of network TV analysis isn’t as effortless as showing up and collecting a paycheck — in his case, $375 million worth of checks the next 10 years.
He is positioned, as the No. 1 analyst for a major NFL broadcast partner, to resume life as Captain America. But Brady must be great, almost as great as he was as a quarterback, or many of us will be ready to pounce. Rarely has he said anything in his football life beyond complementing teammates, coaches and opponents — refraining from public salvos even when he was at war with Bill Belichick in New England. How does he flip his traditional jock mindset to the harsh honesty expected with his salary? That is the biggest hurdle for any athlete entering media. When asked pointedly about it on his podcast, Brady sounded unsure, flip-flopping in mid-thought.
“When I watch football now, the only thing I see — nine out of 10 it’s, ‘Man, that was a really bad play.’ As opposed to the ‘Wow, the spectacular play that (Patrick) Mahomes made or the spectacular play that Josh Allen made.’ ’’ he said. “Now, it’s like, ‘Man, what a bad defensive play, what a bad play by the quarterback.’ ”
His comment would indicate he believes there’s too much negativity in booths. Then he changed gears and said, “There’s a standard for perfection that I want to see the game played at. Because I value the sport, I value the coordination of this incredible chess match that’s happening, the play within every play. And I just feel like there’s probably more Johnny Miller in me, where when I used to watch him on golf telecasts, it was just scathing sometimes. ‘What, that guy choked under pressure?’ or whatever. That’s essentially how I end up seeing the game a lot now. Not that I want to be negative, but I do want to point out — and Belichick taught this to me a lot — it’s hard to win a game in the NFL, there’s more games lost in the NFL than they’re won. If you don’t screw it up, you’ve got a great chance to win. Because most people do just mess it up.”
Great, then. If he means it. Were Brady to become the football version of Miller, as blunt and brutal as any sports analyst ever, he’ll remain firmly in the national consciousness. It’s the Charles Barkley effect, without dipping as lowbrow as Chuck, followed by the requisite mass exposure and TV ads. From there, Brady can call his shots in life and remain ultra-relevant, including a dating future that will be as interesting as Gisele’s, even as she poses on Miami beaches in thongs and see-through dresses.
But if he’s a mamby-pamby apologist who bores us, forget it. We’ll be asking what happened to Greg Olsen, who has done good work in Fox’s No. 1 booth in Brady’s absence and doesn’t deserve a return to No. 2 duty and a massive pay cut.
He has some time to think about what he truly wants. We should let him do just that. “My family, my friends, my teammates, my competitors — I could go on forever, there's too many,” Brady said in the retirement video. “Thank you guys for allowing me to live my absolute dream. I wouldn't change a thing. Love you all.”
For now, America reciprocates his love. But time waits for no one, except Mick Jagger, and soon enough, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. will have a new ballgame. This challenge might be harder than the last one.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.