Tom Brady's retirement was -- and still is, to some extent -- very confusing.
ESPN's Adam Schefter and Jeff Darlington broke the news on a Saturday -- as a blizzard ravaged the Northeast, no less -- and immediately faced backlash from Brady's camp, which disputed that the quarterback had made a decision regarding his NFL future.
Of course, Brady actually retired several days later. Or so we think. But the initial report apparently led to a conversation between Schefter and Brady's agent, Don Yee, which the former shed light on this week while appearing on Barstool Sports' "Pardon My Take" podcast.
"The first contact I had with Don Yee was afterwards," Schefter said. " ... I haven't talked about this before, but I'm in my office, it's a Saturday afternoon, there was a snowstorm in New York, wife is sitting there, Don Yee calls and he was like, 'Why would you not call me in advance?' I said, 'I did call you, multiple times, left messages, never heard back from you.' He said, 'I have a statement I want to read to you.' Now, when he said that, I will say I went, 'OK, what have we got here? Like, what is this statement going to be?'"
Yee released a vague statement that Saturday, in wake of the ESPN report, saying Brady would be "the only person to express his plans with complete accuracy." This raised a few eyebrows, for obvious reasons, but Brady ultimately announced his retirement via social media the following Tuesday.
"You know what it was? It was like picking up my daughter at school on Monday, and she's in seventh grade and she gets in the car and she's like, 'Dad, why is everyone mad at you over Tom Brady? Why are there articles in the New York Post about you about Tom Brady?,' " Schefter said, recalling the period between his initial reporting and Brady's announcement. "I'm like, 'Oh, because we reported that he's going to retire.' Which he did the next morning."
So, is Brady really done?
It's a question that looms, despite the 44-year-old's "retirement" announcement, and Brady hasn't exactly closed the door on an NFL return. But Schefter believes we've probably seen the last of Brady on the NFL gridiron, unless something changes down the road.
"Today, I would say not going to play again," Schefter said. "Listen, today, March 2nd, I don't think he's going to play again. How he's going to feel in July and August, when people are going back to training camp and we're talking football and you guys got Blake Bortles coming on (the podcast) and he's going to be getting a job somewhere or something like that, like, he may get the itch."
If Brady indeed walks away, he does so with seven Super Bowl titles across 22 seasons (20 with the New England Patriots and two with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
