Tom Brady Officially Retires – Here’s His Statement

Tom Brady
Tom Brady

It’s weird how we retain specific, vivid memories from our childhood. I still remember February 3, 2002, like it was yesterday. I was at my Dad’s house for the weekend, and when I got home on Sunday afternoon, my Mom, for no reason other than it being Super Bowl Sunday and she had to work that evening, had bought me a new pair of shoes — a fresh pair of white K-Swiss, that’s how long ago this was — and a Super Bowl XXXVI shirt. I was excited to see Drew Bledsoe’s replacement earlier that season, second-year quarterback and a sixth-round draft pick, Tom Brady, quarterback the New England Patriots against the Rams in the Super Bowl.

Brady led the Patriots to victory that night in what no one anticipated to be the first of seven Super Bowls by Tom Brady.

Pick No. 199 in the 2000 NFL Draft went from a late-round selection and backup quarterback to the greatest player to ever do it at the position over the next two decades. Today, nearly 20 years to the day that Tom Brady and the Patriots beat the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, Brady has announced his retirement on his social media accounts. Here’s a thread from the GOAT himself on his decision to call it a career.

And here’s a statement from the commissioner:

There’s plenty of reasonable debate about the greatest player in each professional sport, but it’s much less of a discussion in the NFL. Tom Brady did it all. He personified winning, racking up seven Lombardi Trophies, more than any other player or franchise in the NFL. Brady had only one season in which he won fewer than 10 games in his 22-year career. Brady threw for 84,520 yards and 624 touchdowns. He is the G.O.A.T.

Maybe most impressive is that he’s walking away from the game on top.

At 44-years-old, Brady is on the heels of yet another MVP-caliber season in 2022. He could probably keep playing at that level if he had the desire. We were blessed to be able to watch the most extraordinary career in NFL history unfold in front of our eyes over the last 22 seasons, and there will likely never be another career like it.

Here’s some fun from around the web on the retirement:

written by

Patrick grew up in Chicago's Bridgeport and Garfield Ridge neighborhoods before moving to the Western Suburbs of Chicago before eventually relocating to the Las Vegas area with his family in 2023. He started with Bleacher Nation in 2021 and has spent time as a Staff Writer and on the Chicago Blackhawks beat. He is currently a writer and editor at Bleacher Nation covering the Chicago Bears and the NFL at large and the author of the Bleacher Nation Newsletter. Patrick is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA).

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