It finally makes sense: the ominous language, opaque reasoning and ambiguous timetable. The New York Post reported Thursday that Tom Brady missed 11 days of training camp last month due to marriage strife with Gisele Bündchen.
For weeks, there’s been unfounded speculation about Brady starring in “The Masked Singer,” jetting off for a luxurious Caribbean vacation and even undergoing plastic surgery. But for those who have followed the seemingly tenuous Brady-Bündchen union in recent years, this report checks out.
“Tom and Gisele are in a fight right now,” a source told the Post.
That piece of information seemingly aligns with Brady’s comments last week about there being “a lot of s— going on.”
For years, Gisele has wanted Brady to retire from football. Her apparent prodding dates back to at least 2017, when she revealed her husband suffers concussions “pretty much every year.”
“I don’t really think it’s a healthy thing for a body to go through that kind of aggression all the time. That could not be healthy for you,” she said at the time.
In both of Brady’s docuseries — “Tom vs. Time” and “Man in the Arena” — he’s spent time talking about his struggles balancing football with his fatherly duties. During the final episode of “Man in the Arena,” Brady alludes to his dueling responsibilities.
“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?,” he said. “There are imbalances in my life. I hope they don’t take things as far as I’ve taken them.”
Brady shares two children with Gisele — Benjamin, 14, and Vivian, 9 — and also has another son, Jack, 15, with ex Bridget Moynahan. When Brady announced his brief retirement, he indicated his family was pulling him away from the gridiron.
“I said this a few years ago, it’s what relationships are all about. It’s not always what I want,” he told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times back in January. “It’s what we want as a family. And I’m gonna spend a lot of time with them and figure out in the future what’s next.”
Then 40 days later, Brady announced he was coming back.
“There’s been trouble in the marriage over his decision to un-retire. Gisele has always been the one with the kids,” a second source told the Post.
It’s true. While Brady has spent the last several years padding his resume as the greatest of all-time, Gisele has largely given up her modeling career. She said as much in a May interview with British Vogue.
“I don’t think relationships just happen; it’s never the fairy tale people want to believe it is. It takes work to be really in sync with someone, especially after you have kids,” she said. “His focus is on his career, mine is mostly on the kids.”
Brady admitted to Howard Stern in 2020 that Gisele “wasn’t satisfied” with their marriage.
“I needed to make a change in that. Her point was, ‘Well, yeah, of course this works for you. It all works for you. But it doesn’t work for me,’” he said.
But it doesn’t seem like there’s been much of a change. Next Sunday night, Brady will be under center to start his 23rd NFL season at 45 years old.
It’s feasible he needed 11 days to smooth things over.
