It's officially official: Tom Brady has retired from the NFL.
After 22 seasons, 316 regular season starts, 47 starts in the postseason, and an unprecedented seven Super Bowl wins, the quarterback posted a lengthy statement to his Instagram page on Tuesday morning.
Safe to say no Eagles fans will be sad to see Brady go. Even though a lot of Eagles fans like to bring up Super Bowl LII, in which the Eagles beat his Patriots, he has frankly just had the Eagles' number. He is 7-2 against the Eagles in his career.
Brady wrote, in part, that he has always believed that football is an all-in proposition and that he's not going to make that competitive commitment anymore.
"I have loved my NFL career, and now it is time to focus my time and energy on other things that require my attention," he wrote.
Brady went on to thank members of the Buccaneers organization, where he has spent the past two seasons, as well as his family, long-time personal trainer Alex Guerrero, and others.
Initially, Brady did not mention the New England Patriots, where he played for 20 seasons. However, later on Tuesday, he added a note of thanks to Patriots Nation in is Instagram story and on Twitter.
The announcement of his retirement comes just days after a weekend ESPN report stirred up speculation about his retirement. Brady's agent and father pushed back on such reports. In the episode of his Let's Go podcast with sports broadcaster Jim Gray, which went out on Monday, he again said he did not have an answer yet.
"Tom will be the only person to express his plans with complete accuracy," his agent said.
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Then, a day later, he made his announcement on Instagram.
His hand may have been forced. One sports commentator suggested that he wanted to wait until after Super Bowl 56 to make the announcement, preferring to avoid drawing attention away from the NFC and AFC title games and what has been a phenomenal NFL playoff season.
Brady is a seven-time Super Bowl winner. Nobody has done that before. He leaves the league at the top of his game, arguably the greatest NFL quarterback of all time.
