When Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady announced his retirement after 22 NFL seasons earlier this year, it wasn’t a huge surprise, but there were plenty of folks who weren’t convinced the GOAT was 100 percent ready to hang up his cleats.
Those doubts were validated when he announced his comeback 41 days later, returning for a third season with the Bucs.
In a recent roundtable discussion that was aired following “The Match,” a charity golf event that featured Brady and three other star quarterbacks from around the NFL, TNT’s Ernie Johnson told Brady he wasn’t convinced he wanted to retire, and asked about the thought process that led to his decisions this offseason.
“Partly, you know, yes,” Brady said (via Pewter Report). “And I think when you’re their (Mahomes and Allen’s) age, if you were to ask me ‘Are you going to play football next year?’ I would say there’s a hundred percent chance I’m playing. And I think as I’ve gotten older, that’s changed because I have other responsibilities.
“So the responsibilities are many people taking care of me and things that I have off the field that are really important to me like my family, my kids, my wife’s done an amazing job of that,” Brady continued. “That’s a big commitment from her, so it’s harder when you get older. I don’t even think they know what’s coming. Aaron (Rodgers) knows these things because your life gets bigger as we all do, our life gets more full, there’s more responsibilities.”
“At this stage it’s like 55 percent yes and 45 percent no,” Brady said. “It’s not 100-0, that’s just the reality. It’s not that I’m not 100 percent committed. It is just as soon as I make the commitment to do it, I’m like ‘Ugh, alright here we go.’ It’s like running a marathon. You can’t decide two weeks before the marathon, ‘Hey, I’m going to start running.’ You got to decide long in advance. We were coming right into free agency and I felt some pressure through it. I talked to the team and the organization and it all worked out.”
Regardless of the percentages, Bucs fans are glad Brady decided to come back for at least one more year, especially after last year’s disappointing exit in the second round of the NFL playoffs.
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