Tom Brady slapped a bow on his NFL career Tuesday, announcing his retirement after 22 seasons in the league, including 20 with the New England Patriots and two with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
So, what’s next?
Colin Cowherd posed that question to Jim Gray, who hosts the “Let’s Go!” podcast alongside Brady, after the quarterback officially called it a career. And Gray basically echoed Brady’s sentiments about the 44-year-old wanting to spend more time with family while entering the next chapter of his life.
“I think that he’s had two loves, and he’s been so fascinated with playing football and wanting to achieve excellence and then obtaining it. I think he’s going to spend time with his family, and he has so many of these other interests,” Gray said on FS1. “He’s involved with the Brady brand that was just announced (and) TB12, which is trying to change nutrition and pliability and help young athletes and adults go about their lives better and fix their bodies and so forth. He also has the cryptocurrency he’s involved with, Autograph, the company. He has 199 Productions. So he has a lot of other things going on, and they’re going to take some of his time. But his family is going to take the majority of the time.
“He has put them in the background for a while, and they have been in his forefront. They’ve been cheering him at every step, and he has young kids. He said something really interesting about two weeks ago on ‘Let’s Go,’ on the podcast. He said, ‘You know, my children deserve to have the father that they need, and my wife deserves to have the husband that they need. It can’t just be about what it is that I want to do. It has to be about what we want to do as a family.’ “
Brady has three children: Jack, 14, Benjamin, 12, and Vivian, 9.
Family always has been a priority for Brady, even during his football career, but it’s now seemingly of the utmost importance. Clearly, he wants to be there for his kids and his wife, Gisele Bündchen.
Just because Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champion, still is capable of performing at an MVP-caliber level, doesn’t mean he needs to keep raising the bar. He’s accomplished just about everything there is to accomplish between the lines.
“He didn’t want to have this impressionable time, like he had with his father, all evaporate, and with his sisters. So it weighed on him,” Gray said. “And Gisele, in her own right, is such a superstar, the top of her industry. She’s been raising the family. And all the attention had been on him and his professional life. So he knew that that dynamic had to change at some point, because he loves family.
“It’s not obligatory. It’s not perfunctory. He loves being with them and wants to be with them. They’re great kids. And they need their father. He’s making the right decision. There’s nothing left to achieve.”
Tom Brady presumably will have a full plate in retirement, between his business ventures and family obligations. But it’ll be a different kind of full plate than he’s had for the last two-plus decades.
