Make Sure This Time Sticks
Tom retired. Again. He made a quick video for his social media that was him saying (paraphrased) “yup, this is it, I’m not going to do another long emotional speech because I used it last year, and you only get to do that once”. It was short, sweet, and to the point. I liked that he said that, acknowledging the nonsense that was his previous retirement. I also made the big, pro-Brady retirement post last year, and I’m not going to waste my time making a big follow-up to that, either. One, because it basically said everything I wanted to say, positively, about his career. Two, because it’s no longer true. He challenged Father Time to another round, and Father Time kicked his ass.
That’s it. Brady went out still looking like the greatest QB of all time (despite the divisional round loss) and retired looking like he could have kept going. Then he decided to keep going and all of it fell apart. I bemoaned the fact that we were being robbed of the pleasure of seeing Tom stumble through a season playing like a washed-up old fart. Almost every great sports figure in existence has suffered the sad, washed-up final seasons. He was kind enough to hear my prayers and answer them with a sufficiently bad year (for him). Thank you Tom, I’m genuinely glad you gave me that.
Is it for real this time? Probably more likely. Last year’s retirement felt off from the get-go, from Schefter stealing his thunder to the rushed nature of it, most of us were suspicious. I genuinely debated not even doing the retirement post because I really doubted it would stay true, but ultimately did it just in case it was. This year? Tom isn’t coming off another great season where he looked like he still had it. He looked tired. He went through a lot of personal turmoil. He’s another year older. He’s got a big fat lucrative contract from FOX sitting in his inbox. I think he’ll be pretty good in the booth.
But this is Tom Brady, a man who has already unretired once and has a pathological love for football. There is a non-zero chance he is on a team next year. Maybe he lasts longer this time and just hops back in to play for a team like the 49ers who suffer some bad QB injury luck. A Twitter follower pointed out that there is also a chance that could be a set-up for a Super Bowl ad stunt, and I hate that we live in a world where that is absolutely possible.
So this is unlikely to be our final Brady comic either way. If he unretires again I vow to be even meaner next year. As it stands now, even the media has largely had a subdued response to the announcement thanks to last year (OR IT’S AN AD CONSPIRACY). Tom went out with a meh, and that’s all there is to it. See you in the booth you bum.
Discussion (25) ¬
He’s doing the booth thing? That’s a shame. He’d make a great QBs coach or OC somewhere.
To be fair it is insanely rare in the entire Super Bowl era for a shoo-in HOF (or frankly even most Hall of Very Good) players to opt into coaching, let alone something as down the org chart as a positional coordinator. That’s true in all the big four sports in recent decades. At most I can see him taking on an unofficial/personal QB coach role on the side as a labor of love and/or favor for a friend, but nothing too official or onerous.
Can you name one HOF-quality QB that ended up as a coach of any sort? I can’t come up with any. Being a great player is one thing, but it doesn’t necessarily map to being a good coach. In the current NFL, I can only think of two former QBs who became coaches off the top of my head: Byron Leftwich (who was an OK QB, I guess in his day) and career backup Franch Reich.
Bart Starr with the 70s/80s Packers & Otto Graham with the mid-60s Redskins. Both were terrible.
That it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it shouldn’t. I mean, given how Peyton Manning more or less ran the offenses he was in how could he not make at least a decent OC? Further, I just can’t imagine someone with Brady’s competitiveness settle for a new gig in which he wasn’t playing against someone or something?
being good at doing a thing does not mean you will be good at or enjoy teaching others to do the thing
I feel like I hear about HOF players becoming coaches at the high school or junior high level regularly, usually at the same time their kids are there. It sounds like you might have been looking for longer coaching careers though?
If so, I think the answer you are looking for is Mike Ditka.
Mike Ditka and Mike Singletary are the only recent HOF players who later coached I could think of.
In terms of HOF players that became a position coach Sid Luckman later became QB coordinator for the Bears in the 50’s, but even here it was a part-time position at the time.
Dick Lebeau got in the Hall as a Lions player then coached. Great coordinator but not so great one step up.
Doug Pederson was also a QB
Hopefully this doesn’t turn into his Brett Favre arc. I spent the whole season basically questioning what the point of coming back even was, and I still don’t get it. The Bucs were obviously trending for the worse, and the injuries in camp just exacerbated their already existing problems. Instead of going out with a bang, he goes out with a whimper, and Father Time pulls off a comeback for the ages.
Enjoy retirement, Tom. For real this time.
YOU GOT BACKUP INCOMING DAVE HOLD ON
Is this what it was like when Michael Jordan retired? When Wayne Gretzky retired? Tom Brady is arguably more of a GOAT than either of those guys, but it all feels so unceremonious. By all measure, TB12 is the greatest football player in history, so why does his retirement feel so…blah. It feels like we should have EVERYONE posting, doing entire heartfelt sports-talk segments, getting teary-eyed videos from past rivals……but all we get is a dumb little video that looks like it was taken by a 40 year-old divorced dad who is nice enough, but so out of touch with the zeigeist. Where’s the production value? Where’s the sentiment? I know part of this is as Dave said: He diluted it with a previous half-assed retirement. Maybe it’s also how fast we blow through important news? I’m not advocating for anybody to throw him a parade or anything, I just expected more.
It’s basically just that. It’s the second time he’s retired. And it’s not like he took a couple of seasons off, ran it back for one more year and then went out similar to what Jordan did with the Wizards. He was gone for 40 days then decided, “Nope, actually I’ll keep playing.” Doesn’t help that the season went terribly for him, at least in terms of team success. If last season was one of triumph and ending narratives, this season was nothing but Tom finding ways to hit new lows that killed the idea that he was invincible. He could have gone out a king, as close to the peak as he was going to get to short of retiring a champion. Instead he bows out like Roethlisberger of last year. Or Brees the year before. Still physically more capable of continuing, but clearly a shell of what he once was.
Even he said it himself. Everyone, himself included, already spoke their piece on his career and his impact on the game after he “retired” last season, and it’s simply not worth repeating again. I’ve rooted for the dude his entire career and even my initial reaction was just, “oh, cool.” Pretty much everyone outside of his most dedicated apologists agreed that he should have stayed retired, so him actually deciding to hang ’em up for good came as more of a relief than anything major. All this season did was make you question what the point of coming back even was.
I don’t know if Schefter spoiling his original intention last season screwed everything up for him or what, but the bottom line is that once you pull a stunt like that, you lose a lot of goodwill from fans across the league. Hardcore Brady fans and Patriots/Bucs fans will lament his retirement again, but I don’t blame everyone else for just being whatever about the whole thing and hoping this isn’t another Brett Favre situation.
For sure, Stunkei! I think you hit at a lot of what I’m feeling. Maybe it’s just that I (and many of us) never really bought into the whole retirement thing in the first place and now it’s just another sad old man limping into the sunset. It just feels like I should care more than I do.
Agreed. I always imagined that Tom’s eventual retirement would be some sort of Earth-shattering news for the league. Just a complete crater that sends shockwaves through the entire NFL. A player who will never be replaced or forgotten, with everyone knowing that the single most important piece of league history is now gone. And we did have that! Last season, actually… For 40 days.
Maybe if he treated this season more like a standard old-man retirement tour similar to Albert Pujols or Kobe Bryant in their final years, it would have left more of an impact. At least at that point you could argue that maybe he just wanted the media frenzy that comes with that type of announcement and the product on the field wouldn’t have meant nearly as much. Instead he just comes back, tears apart his family, loses more than he’s ever lost in his entire career, and get blown out in his final playoff game before deciding to call it quits again. I was more surprised by him retiring this time around if only because at least now he had some incentive to try to keep playing football.
I will say this. Back in 2014, he responded to potential retirement by saying, “I’ll retire when I suck.” Only took 9 years for that to happen and you could argue he still didn’t really suck in the end haha. Guess he was just staying true to himself.
*sigh* I really wish the bucs hadn’t phoned in the falcons game. They could have won it easily and then the entire narrative about his season would be different since it would have been a winning record.
Winning a meaningless game against another bad NFC South team would not have changed the Bucs getting dunked on by the Cowboys and Brady going out the same way Marino did.
NOTHING is as sad of an ending for HOF player as Marino vs the Jags. At least the Cowboys existed when Brady got drafted (not to mention Tom’s 7 rings to Dan’s 0.
Kinda excited to see what kind of weirdo spaceman shit Retired Tom is gonna get up to.
he’s gonna marry elon and they’re gonna mine crypto on venus
Dave, you’ve got to do a comic about people bidding up to $99,000 for a jar of sand from the spot Brady gave his retirement announcement.
It’s kind of a testament to how much people *wanted* Brady to suck that we’re pretending this season was a commentary on him. Dude had to throw 43+ times a game and still had a slightly above league average passer rating. It would legitimately be one of his most impressive feats if he managed to make that team look like anything other than dogshit
I’m a Brady fan, just going to lead with that.
Brady’s 2022 season:#3 in yards, #9 in completion %age, #2 in int %age, #4 in yards/game, #18 in rating, #18 in QBR, #3t in 4th quarter comebacks, #2t for game winning drives…
Did Father Time really win? He was still better than half the qbs in the league. Compare Brady’s last season to a noodle-armed Peyton Manning who got benched halfway through the season, or god forbid Johnny Unitas, may he RIP, who just embarrassed himself trying to hang on in San Diego.
Yes he didn’t look as sharp as prime Brady but given the problems on that team he did pretty well. He played every game his last 3 seasons, unlike Brees and Roethlisberger who were beaten down physically.
Assuming he stays retired, I’d call it a draw at worst. He’s getting out before he truly sucks.