It’s no surprise Brady is back for more - TSN

Of course, it wasn’t a true retirement. More like a 40-day pause.

Just long enough for Tom Brady to decide he wasn’t done after all, reversing a decision he’d managed to put off longer than almost anyone who has ever suited up in the National Football League and decide he’s not done after all.

For those familiar with professional sports and the athletes who approach the game as Brady does (although perhaps no one ever has), the news of his un-retirement hardly comes as a shock.

Despite his age, Tom Brady at age 44 was better than almost anyone else playing quarterback in the NFL last season. That’s hard to fathom when you consider how few have ever played the game at his age, period.

Brady would still be famous without football, and his earning potential outside the game is enormous, thanks to the persona he built through 22 seasons.

But none of that can recreate the feeling he gets from the game – be that the grind he has turned into an art, or the competition that comes with stepping onto the field on Sunday afternoons against men who are mostly a generation younger than he is.

It would be correct to suggest there’s nothing left for Brady to accomplish, given his seven Super Bowl rings, three MVPs and ownership of most of the significant records for NFL quarterbacks. His two seasons in Tampa Bay served to address the question of whether he could succeed without Bill Belichick and the Patriot way, so that question no longer hangs in the air.

But this isn’t about Brady needing more or proving things. It’s about him trying to keep the experience going for as long as he can, because when it’s over, it’s over, and there’s nothing else like it.

If Brady didn’t understand what that would truly feel like 40 days ago, he does now.

Brady didn’t achieve his kind of success because he has a balanced life. He did it by being obsessed with one thing and one thing only.

In Mark Leibovich’s 2018 book Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times, the author establishes a relationship with Brady in which the quarterback confesses to having few interests beyond football and reveals himself to be unresolved about how and why he would leave the game.

The result is that retirement is the only thing Brady has failed at in his NFL career.

An argument can certainly been made that a person in his mid-40s who has achieved wealth and fame beyond his dreams and more success than anyone in his sport probably shouldn’t put himself on the same field as players half his age. Only the unbalanced nature of Brady makes it make sense.

Brady’s career has been built on being able to defy the odds in all sorts of ways.

From the humble beginnings of his entry into the NFL as a sixth-round draft choice, to the unparalleled success he was able to achieve and the sustainability of his excellence into his mid-40s.

Continuing to do so should have gotten more challenging as he got older, just as it has for every other quarterback who played the game.

So, what is he risking by coming back?

Every great athlete knows that the most daunting opponent he or she will ever face is Father Time.

Name a great athlete and you can probably remember the moment you wished they would retire, whether that was Willie Mays running on busted knees at the end of his career with the New York Mets or Peyton Manning short-arming the ball through his final season with the Denver Broncos.

Brady, at the time of his retirement in February, managed to reach the end of his career without succumbing first to the ultimate opponent. Father Time never won.

That’s exactly what made his first shot at walking away impossible.

Adblock test (Why?)

It’s no surprise Brady is back for more - TSN
Read More