Greatest of All Time at "Never Mind," Too
Tom Brady is just screwing with all of us now.
Or maybe Brady's decision to unretire from pro football after one frickin' month of a life of theoretical leisure is Cristiano Ronaldo's fault. Brady was in noted spring break resort Manchester, England last Saturday to watch soccer, and Ronaldo had a hat trick in Manchester United's 3-2 victory over Tottenham. Afterwards, the two aging immortals (there's an oxymoron for you) had a long chat, presumably about the joys of superstardom.
No, if Brady and Ronaldo had an in-depth discussion, it was probably about cryptocurrency and international tax avoidance. There's nobody to praise or blame for Brady's sudden reversal of his last sudden decision about his career than the man himself. He reverted to his first principle. Brady will play until he sucks at the game he has mastered but which has trapped him all the same.
It couldn't have been mere boredom. Brady's retirement consumed the period of the year where's always been off duty anyway. And while Brady can be a weird dude at times, he's certainly not so weird as to find the rest of his life a drab shadow of his life in the NFL. He's sincere to a fault, and means all that stuff he says about his family. Also, sitting on the beach in Costa Rica in February is not a prison sentence.
The inescapable conclusion is that when it came to football, Brady fell into the ancient maxim, "divorce in haste, repent at leisure." He retired on a whim and he unretired the same way. Maybe his first decision was a powerful whim, a sincere wish even. It was no match for the power football has over him. Brady surveyed his options, and playing football completed him in a way becoming a diet/exercise guru never could and never will. He'll keep talking to Jim Grey and NFL broadcast teams instead of the gang on "The View."
That's fine. If the very idea of leaving football gave Brady his one-month midlife crisis, he ended it. He chose his path. It will end as he envisions it. Maybe not this season, but not too far from now, he will go from one of the 5 or 6 best quarterbacks in the NFL to like 13th or 14th. He'll fall into the level of last season's Mac Jones.
Brady won't end like Willie Mays with the Mets, Michael Jordan with the Wizards or Muhammed Ali against Larry Holmes. For him, a simple fall to mediocrity would be horror enough to conclude he's done. If the Bucs, who have 20 free agents and salary cap worries Brady just made worse, slide to like 8-9 in 2022, that alone could push Brady out into the cold, cold footballless world of everyday mortals.
But if it doesn't, if Brady's stubborn enough to play until he really stinks (you know some franchise would pay him to do it), then the rest of us have the duty to keep our dignity and not feel sad about it. This is the destiny he's chosen. Let him have it without pathos.
Unless Brady re-retires in training camp this summer. In that case, fuck him.
posted by Michael Gee @ 11:05 AM
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