Michael Irvin isn’t buying the Tom Brady retirement chatter.
Brady calling it a career in the coming months seems like a very real possibility. For the first time in his historic and lengthy NFL tenure, Brady over the weekend after a season-ending loss expressed uncertainty about his playing days. There are a number of factors — family, chief among them — that could motivate the superstar quarterback to hang up his pads.
Irvin, however, believes Brady will start gearing up for another season once he’s mentally and physically refreshed.
“I would be shocked if he left,” Irvin said Monday on ESPN’s “First Take.” “Let’s be real here, shocked. Let me tell you why. He left New England to play GM. This is his time now to play GM. He didn’t want to leave New England. ‘They’re going to get rid of me early, I might as well go while I still have something in me and I’m going over here. I’m playing GM.’ He still has some talent in that building. This is his opportunity to play GM. He was emotional right there. His wife’s up there, they’ve been talking about it. He had to say that, but once he rests and guys start calling, ‘Tom, let’s try to do this again,’ he’ll be back. I refuse to believe we’re going to lose Tom Brady. He’ll be back for one more year.”
Irvin might be off the mark with his GM take, as Brady pretty clearly has had significant say in personnel decisions ever since he arrived in Tampa Bay. The future Hall of Famer spearheaded the movements to acquire Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown and pushed for the Bucs to retain their entire free agent class last offseason.
Brady addressed the possibility of retirement, in a variety of ways, during his latest “Let’s Go!” podcast, and he came off as very at peace with his body of work, how the 2021 season ended and the potential to move on from the game this offseason. As such, Irvin probably shouldn’t be so confident about TB12 running it back.
