Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Welcome back!
Now that Tom Brady’s days-long, clunky, socially awkward social media retirement is over Patriot Nation can rejoice!
The GOAT can and very much will now indeed take his proper, permanent place in Patriots history.
Forget the pain of his free-agent departure.
Forget the two-year, Super Bowl-winning fling with the fans of Tampa Bay.
Forget seeing him in that ugly Bucs jersey or drunkenly enjoying that too-warm, Lombardi-tossing championship boat parade.
Forget trying to come to grips with your mixed rooting emotions. Am I a Patriots fan? Am I a Brady fan?
Forget it all, because history almost certainly will.
Time heals all wounds and history remembers the winners, after all.
And Brady was the ultimate winner in New England where he played 90 percent of his NFL career.
We all know the numbers, but it’s worth charcuterie board refresher of some of the accomplishments to make ourselves feel better after these last awkward two years.
Six of Brady’s seven Super Bowl rings have a Patriots logo.
His 243 career wins included 219 in his first NFL home.
Of the 624 regular season touchdowns he threw, 541 were for New England.
Most of his records came in his career calling Gillette Stadium home. The others? Well, the foundation for those all were built under Bill Belichick’s guidance.
Business and NFL reality stole Brady from the Patriots for a short time, but it never took the Patriots out of Brady. On some level his accomplishments, even in Tampa, were Patriots accomplishments, honed in what Belichick described as TB12’s “humble” beginnings in Foxborough.
Whether Brady properly acknowledged Patriots fans, Belichick or even Robert Kraft in his various Instagram or Twitter posts was certainly worthy of a few days of talk-radio debate. But it’s a discussion that’s already fading much the way Brady’s actual time in a Tampa uniform will fade from our collective memory.
As Brady himself said in October following the big battle between the Patriots and Bucs at Gillette, he’s now free to “always be a part of this community” of Patriot Nation and New England.
Now, there certainly will and should be a focus on building statues and renaming of roads.
There should and will be a sooner-rather-than later ceremony for his red jacket induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.
There should and likely will be a stand-alone Tom Brady Day event, a fan-filled affair to honor the greatest to ever do it and for him to acknowledge the loyal masses of Massachusetts and beyond one more memorable time. It should be a retirement ceremony to end all retirement ceremonies, befitting the best to ever do it.
After the requisite five-year wait Brady will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, his gold-jacket moment a Patriots moment even if Bucs fans try to attach themselves to it.
Three years, five years, a decade or even a century from now when Brady is brought up it will immediately surface an image of a Patriots logo and his partnership with Belichick and Kraft that created the greatest dynasty in football history and the modern measuring stick for success in professional sports.
Joe Montana is a 49er, after all. No one thinks of him in a Kansas City.
Michael Jordan’s a Bull, nary a mention of his work in Washington.
Babe Ruth, sadly for Sox fans, is a Yankee. (Did you know that Ruth, like Brady, played 22 seasons? That both icons went to 10 World Series/Super Bowls?)
To get too sappy here with that too sappy, poster-worthy quote: If you love something, set it free. If it returns, it’s yours and was meant to be.
Retirement and history return Brady to New England.
Rejoice, for all of eternity and history he’s now yours!
Tom Brady is a Patriot again.
As it should be and maybe as it should have always been.
