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To those who know Tom Brady best, there was a pretty real tell on which way he was leaning over the past couple of weeks. And to set this up, his dad, Tom Sr., told me this story from last June.
The whole extended family was in the Hamptons, celebrating a graduation that happened to come in a dead spot in the NFL calendar, and Tom Jr. was there to take part in the festivities. One morning, during the trip, Tom Sr. and his wife, Galynn, got up and, at about 7:30 a.m., with it pouring rain outside, they grabbed their coats and their umbrellas and went out to get coffee.
“And he was outside with his shoulder pads on and his helmet on, and he was throwing the ball and running around,” Tom Sr. says. “I said, And he said, . I’m thinking, ”
Brady was less than two months shy of his 45th birthday, with seven Super Bowl rings to his name, and all the significant all-time passing records his, and there he was, standing in the rain, in the middle of June, in Vacationland, grinding it out.
“I just think that he found a passion in his life that very few people will ever find in their lives,” Tom Sr. says. “No matter what they do.”
So that’s why, in the weeks after the Buccaneers were eliminated from the NFC playoffs, Brady’s dad took a pretty noticeable hint—Tom Jr. didn’t dive right back into working out for the 2023 season the day after the season ended, the way he had every year before. It didn’t happen the next day, either, or the day after that and then, last Tuesday, before Brady let the world know, he confirmed his dad’s suspicions.
He was finally, once and for all, done with football at 45. And his dad has all the evidence that he needs now that this is actually—finally—it.
“There’s no training or no plans on training anymore,” Tom Sr. says. “So I think, in his own mind, he’s got a full commitment to taking care of his kids this year.”
I know less than the guy’s dad, of course, but I’m pretty convinced this is it, too—while leaving a sliver of room for error in that I think Brady’s football addiction makes it tough to predict how the reality in front of him, one without football that I think he’s feared to some degree, will play out.
If he actually is done? Well, then he had one of the greatest rides and authored one of the greatest stories in the global history of professional sports. And I figured there’d be no one better to ask about that ride than the guy who rode shotgun for all these years. Tom Sr., of course, has a lot of memories.
• . It was no sure thing going into training camp the summer of 2000, with the Patriots carrying a deep quarterback room and a ton of needs elsewhere, and Brady being a sixth-round pick, No. 199. Tom Sr. calls the conversation a “spectacular memory” for the family.
“The odds weren’t particularly in his favor, and they had three pretty well-established quarterbacks with John Friesz and Michael Bishop, and, obviously the leader of the band was Drew [Bledsoe],” he says. “That was the very first memory; that was a joyous moment. And then seeing him get into his first game, it was on Thanksgiving in Detroit [in 2000], and then going on and getting the chance to play the next year was thrilling.”
And, Tom Sr. continued, “winning the Super Bowl that year was beyond any expectations or hopes or dreams that any father could ever have.”
• From there, of course, Brady quickly established himself as one of the sport’s preeminent names. And little did Tom Sr. know, all the way back then, that on the other end of all of it, .
It’s no secret that 2022 was an incredibly difficult year for Brady personally and professionally. He was going through a divorce. His kids, one in New York and two in Miami, were getting older. On the field, his team was older, had gone through a coaching change and needed more of Brady at a time when he probably had less to give than over his first two years in Tampa Bay. But through everything, Brady kept his head held high.
“When it’s not the best of circumstances, when you’re the guy that has to represent the team and the organization and you’re going through it on the public stage, I could not have admired the way he has handled this year more,” Tom Sr. says. “I know that I could never have performed to that level, and I don’t know how he did. I mean, he still had a pretty darn good year, although the team didn’t have the [same] success.”
In the end, Tom Sr. says that’s why he and Galynn were waiting there for their son in the tunnel at the end of the loss to Dallas, not because they knew it’d be their last chance to see him. “It’s been a rough, rough six months,” he says. “And we were simply there to give him support.”
• And just being there, Tom Sr. says, really is what he’ll miss most. I asked him to ballpark how many games he went to over the last 23 years, and he said he thought the number was in the neighborhood of 220. More than just that, he added, between all those trips, leaving Friday and coming back Monday, and all the games on TV, Tom Jr. had given his family something to rally around in good times (Super Bowl wins) and bad (when Galynn fell ill in 2016).
“Our emotions have always been right on the edge of the center snap every game,” he says. “There’s been so much fun, so many highs and some lows. I mean, we have been fully human and fully alive through this process, where we’ve experienced the greatest joys and the significant disappointments. All in all, the overriding effect is great joy, and that’s what we’re gonna miss. … We’re gonna have such a hole in our lives.”
That said, Tom Sr. conceded there is good and bad to having to fill that hole.
On one hand, Tom Jr.’s games have served as a touchstone for him, his wife, his son, three daughters and their families to come together every fall and winter. “Absolutely,” he says, “in many, many respects, it’s been wonderful.” On the other hand, because of his son’s football career, the Bradys haven’t had a family Christmas in a quarter century. Obviously, now, some calendars have opened up.
• Then there’s how Tom Sr. will remember his son’s career. For the rest of us, I think it’s pretty simple—as the greatest of all time. For the family, though, .
“I think he would like to be known as a team guy,” Tom Sr. says. “No better, no worse than anybody else. He was a guy that loved his teammates, loved his opponents—he had a great respect for them. And I don’t think that he’s ever gotten too big a hat to recognize how special these other guys have been in his life, as well as the organizations. I mean, the Patriots were so great for so many years, and the Buccaneers have been wonderful these last three years. I think there’s just a great sense of gratitude on his part.
“And I think that it’s reciprocated by the comments that I’ve read and heard from these other players these last few days.”
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