A portion of the football world has moved past debating whether Tom Brady will stay retired or strap on the pads for another NFL season.
Some football minds, like Mike Florio, have reached the point of projecting what team Brady will be playing for in 2022.
Florio last week predicted Brady will be playing for the San Francisco 49ers next season, a take the Pro Football Talk scribe and talking head since has doubled down on. While Florio's argument makes some sense on several levels, Colin Cowherd can't see it coming to fruition.
"The order isn't I'm going to retire and two weeks later, going play for the 49ers," Cowherd said Tuesday on FS1's "The Herd," as transcribed by Sports Illustrated. "So Brady retires, stories come out that he wasn't happy at the end, which Bruce Arians refutes, and now I am supposed to believe the most prepared and detailed athlete of my life is just going to throw a haymaker out and come out of retirement? It makes no sense."
Brady is, indeed, incredibly calculated like Cowherd notes, but perhaps this was part of the seven-time Super Bowl champion's plan all along. By walking away from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and not definitively saying he's done playing, Brady seemingly gave himself some flexibility when it comes to his football future.
The Bucs would own Brady's rights if he came out of retirement, but Tampa might be handcuffed into making a deal if it knows the future Hall of Famer has no intention of playing another down for the organization.
Is TB12 joining his hometown team for a swan-song season very likely? Probably not. But it's tough to rule anything out when you consider the type of competitor Brady is. And it would be a pretty poetic way to close the book on what's been a remarkable career.
