Apparently, seven Super Bowl wins aren’t enough for Tom Brady.
Just two months after announcing his retirement from football, Brady changed his mind and revealed last week that he’s not done playing after all. Already one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, Brady claimed he has “unfinished business” to resolve.
“These past two months, I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands,” he said. “That time will come. But it’s not now.”
The 44-year-old legend will return to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which won a Super Bowl championship against the Kansas City Chiefs under his direction, and make another run for his eighth ring. He didn’t explain why, exactly, he decided to unretire or why he decided to even retire in the first place. But it was clear from the comments he had made over the past couple of months that he wasn’t so sure about leaving the field for good.
During a conversation with soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo earlier this month, Brady was seen on video raising his eyebrows and shrugging when Ronaldo asked, “You’re finished, right?” And several weeks prior, Brady openly admitted that his retirement wasn’t a settled question.
“You never say never,” he said. “I feel very good about my decision. I don’t know how I’ll feel six months from now.”
Perhaps Brady saw the record-high gas prices and soaring inflation rates and decided that now isn’t the time to stop working. Or maybe he, like several other athletes who have returned from retirement, knew that he would miss the game too much if he stopped playing.
And though he doesn’t have anything left to prove, he has a lot to offer. This past season, he led the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns, came in second in MVP voting, and was within just a few games of another Super Bowl. He’s at the top of his game — and he knows it.
“I really think I can play as long as I want,” Brady said last year. “I could literally play until I’m 50 or 55 if I wanted to.”
It sounds like that’s exactly what he intends to do.
