Tom Brady Announces His Retirement

There will be no storybook homecoming will come for Tom Brady with his hometown 49ers next season. There will be no return to the Patriots, and there will not be one more run in Tampa Bay. Tom Brady took to Twitter this morning to announce that he is retiring from the NFL, this time for good.

For the second time in as many seasons, the greatest quarterback in NFL history has stepped away from the game, this time for good.

Brady went from pick No. 199 to one of the greatest ever to do it. Brady threw for 89,214 yards, 649 touchdowns, and a 97.28 passer rating during his storied career, including seven Super Bowl championships.

Tom Brady won five Super Bowl MVP awards and owned a 21-6 touchdown to interception ratio in the Super Bowl. He was 7-3 in 10 Super Bowl appearances and held a pristine 97.7 passer rating in those appearances.

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 two seasons in which he won fewer than 10 games in his 23-year career. That was this season when the Buccaneers, with zero running game, won a weak NFC South and were ousted in the Wild Card round by Dallas. So the argument can be made that Brady’s first retirement was near perfect, but Brady still went out on his terms. He wanted to play another season, and he did.

Brady’s 13,400 passing yards, 88 playoff touchdowns, and 649 regular season touchdowns are all first all-time.