Brady, this time it’s true: the greatest quarterback of all time retires

This time it’s for real. There will be no second thoughts this time. Tom Brady announces retirement from NFL football. He had done it exactly a year ago, then he had changed his mind. This time he announces the decision on social media with a video and specifies “for good”. Forever. With the addendum: “I wouldn’t change a thing”, and he means career.

YEAR TOO MUCH

—

So not even the last unfortunate season. Played for the third year in Tampa, and that seemed like too much to many. Which perhaps cost him his marriage to Gisele Bundchen: they separated in the meantime and the Brazilian model was very opposed to his return to the gridiron. She certainly cost him too many bitter pills to throw down: she was the first closed with a negative record in her career, 8 wins and 9 defeats. At 45 you still won the Division, the NFC South, literally performing sporting miracles, saving your Bucs in at least three games with fabulous comebacks in the last seconds. Setting an all-time record for completed passes, as many as 490, finishing third among quarterbacks in passing yards, 4,694, behind the boys, Mahomes and Herbert. But also losing in the first round of the playoffs, and we are talking about a home defeat, 14-31, with Tampa humiliated at home by the modest Dallas Cowboys. The team was shamefully coached by Coach Bowles, the new head coach, and Coach Leftwich, the offensive coordinator, who was promptly fired after the season ended. He did everything possible and often even the impossible, but it was sad to see him fight against windmills, involuntary Don Quixote, out of time and out of age for these battles. He could have offered himself to the highest bidder: there were many quality teams, San Francisco and Las Vegas first, ready to look around. Instead he said enough. Him this time forever.

BETTER EVERY AGE

—

He retires the strongest to ever play football. In team sports there are often legitimate doubts about establishing the best, it is difficult to compare different eras. Not in the oval ball. Brady retires with 7 Super Bowl wins, he has won more than any of the 32 NFL franchises. He has even played ten, nine with the New England Patriots, one with the Tampa Bay Bucs, in fact, for which he lifted the Lombardi Trophy two seasons ago. He was the best player of the match 5 times, 3 of the season. He won 35 playoff games, Montana is second with 16, just to understand… First for yards thrown, for touchdowns thrown, and just think: for 99 different targets in his career. He really made everyone who played with him great…

THE INTRUDER

—

If LeBron was the Chosen One in basketball, Brady was the interloper. He wasn’t expected to become who knows who, let alone the top every era. He benched a lot in college at Michigan University, then was drafted in 2000 with only 199 picks, after 6 other quarterbacks. Eternal underrated. His epic with the Patriots in Boston was like a movie. Then in Tampa he demonstrated that he was the “system”, he wasn’t the best product. He has always been the Sun King who made those around him shine on a football field. Yet he has never been the most performing athlete, never the most explosive, the fastest. The smartest, perhaps. And for sure the one that under pressure he never shivered. The one who terrified his opponents with the match hanging in the balance and gave confidence to his teammates, beyond the values ​​of the field and logic. He says enough. This time, from now on, it will be just nostalgia. But he can’t stay away from the fields, from football. And then we’ll see him comment on the oval ball for Fox Sport. And who knows how many times he’ll want to get off the press box and put on his helmet once again…