Tom Brady is the ultimate perfectionist. The greatest quarterback to ever play is so particular, he famously doesn’t even eat strawberries.
But it looks like he screwed up his career capper. TB12 got ahead of Tom Brady.
We thought Brady formally announced his retirement Saturday when his brand account tweeted out his unparalleled accomplishments and thanked its founder for “22 incredible seasons.” Adam Schefter and Jeff Darlington, the NFL’s reporter of record and one of the consummate Brady insiders, broke the faux news with their own story.
“Tom Brady is retiring from football after 22 seasons in which he won a historic seven Super Bowl titles,” they wrote. The news was attributed to “sources.”
Apparently, one of those sources wasn’t Brady. Minutes later, his agent, Don Yee, sent out a clarification — acting as if Brady’s own company’s Twitter account didn’t confirm the ESPN report. “I understand the advance speculation about Tom’s future,” Yee wrote. “Without getting into the accuracy or inaccuracy of what’s being reported, Tom will be the only person to express his plans with complete accuracy. He knows the realities of the football business and planning calendar as well anybody, so that should be soon.”
Tom Brady’s father, Tom Sr., attributed the hoopla to an “online publication circulating an unsubstantiated rumor.”
Yeah, that notorious gossip rag, “@TB12Sports.”
The reports that Brady was suddenly thinking about retirement came as unexpectedly as the mid-afternoon tweet that started this mess. He signed an extension with the Buccaneers last spring that ties him to the franchise through 2022, which conveniently coincides with Brady’s 45th birthday. For years, he’s said he wants to play until he’s 45, or maybe even longer. And he was on track to accomplish that. At 44, Brady led the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns. He was an egregious coaching error away from possibly playing in his second straight NFC Championship.
It was all going according to plan.
Then Seth Wickersham, who just authored the formative book on Brady’s years with the Patriots, predicted he would retire at the end of his playoff run — whenever that came. The item was buried in an NFL playoff prediction piece.
That started one week of non-stop retirement conjecture: Gotham Chopra announced the delay of the final “Man in the Arena”; Schefter and Darlington came out with a report that Brady was “noncommittal” about his playing future. Brady sidestepped the question in his post-Divisional Round presser, and then expounded on his seeming deliberation on his podcast with Jim Gray. “It’s not always what I want. It's what we want as a family,” Brady said.
Brady’s spiel about putting family first isn’t new. He’s been very public about his struggles with balancing his football and personal lives, ruminating about the mental tug of war on docuseries and ESPN+ specials. Brady’s been planting the seeds for his retirement since the prologue of “Tom vs. Time.”
That’s what made the announcement so surprising. There was no “Man in the Arena” or recitation of the wise words from “Four Agreements.” Instead, there was just one tweet, and it wasn’t even from Brady’s own account.
At the least, it seemed inevitable Brady would pair his retirement announcement with a slick video — just like his mentee, Julian Edelman.
Brady probably won’t make us wait for long before putting out an official word. The Buccaneers are supposed to pay him $15 million of his $20 million signing bonus Feb. 4. One would assume they want to know whether he’s coming back before doing that.
Maybe this is all part of Brady’s plan to strong-arm the Bucs into meeting his demands, or some other elaborate ploy. There’s no way Brady would purposefully allow his career to end with a deleted tweet, right?