For more than two decades, Tom Brady has been the GOAT standard.
He dominated on the field, in business and in his personal life with a supermodel wife and beautiful family.
He was seemingly and supposedly the perfect man in oh so many ways.
But, now, we’ve finally found something that Brady actually sucks at.
Appropriately – or maybe even ironically, we’ll have to run it through the Alanis Morissette test – Brady sucks at retiring.
The last four days of his riding off into the NFL sunset have been nothing less than a too-many-tacos poopshow, to keep it somewhat family-friendly.
From last Friday night’s CBS sports report that Brady’s retirement was imminent, through ESPN’s more definitive declaration on Saturday and including TB12’s actual social media announcement Tuesday morning, it all felt like a how-to class in ways to mismanage the retirement of the most successful, notable athlete of this or any generation.
ESPN’s work brought denials and misdirection comments from none other than the Buccaneers, Brady’s agent, Don Yee, and even the always quotable Tom Brady Sr.
Brady himself got into the godawful public relations fun with his comments on his weekly “Let’s Go!” podcast with Jim Gray, in which he clearly and knowingly lied to his host and his listeners with word salads about the “process” he was going through.
Then, mere hours after that disingenuous endeavor that probably could have put the Brady retirement chatter to bed for at least a couple weeks so as not to disrespectfully step on the toes of the Rams and Bengals in the lead up to Super Bowl weekend the way the story had attempted to overshadow the conference title games, Brady took to his social media platforms to make it official.
No big video production.
No in –person announcements.
No pomp or circumstance.
Just a social media post that could have come at anytime from anywhere.
Further muddying the retirement waters, Brady’s long statement never once mentioned the Patriots, the Kraft Family, Bill Belichick, New England fans or any of the aspects of the first 21 years of his NFL career. Not a word. Not a character. Not even an emoji until he belatedly responded to a Patriots team Instagram post of a statement from owner Robert Kraft.
Everything about Brady’s retirement has been bad. The timing. The plan. The execution. All of it.
But, maybe that’s how it should be.
Maybe the man who defied Father Time right up and through his final 5,000-yard age-44 season should struggle to retire. Maybe it shouldn’t be so easy for a guy who doesn’t look like he needs to quit to actually leave football behind him.
This retirement stuff is not for him. It’s not mean to be. It’s weird.
Whether he’s doing it for himself, his wife, his family or because he’s lost the love of the competition and doesn’t want to try to duct-tape together another run in Tampa, Brady has indeed called it a career.
But he’s not been able to do so in a way becoming a man of his greatness, his accomplishments and his reputation.
The man who is the best football player ever. The man who is one of the greatest winners and competitors ever. The man with a successful budding business empire and endless off-field opportunities. The man who has had the world by the tail for the entirety of this millennium has finally failed miserably at something.
Tom Brady is struggling to retire.
Somehow, that feels so fitting.
After all these years, Jets fans and all the Brady haters are finally right.
Tom Brady sucks…at retiring.
