BRADY STILL FAR FROM FINISH LINE
Ahead of his 10th Super Bowl, quarterback says he plans to play past the age of 45
It’s not premature to start calling Tom Brady the Gordie Howe of the NFL — a superstar performer who just wouldn’t retire, long after every player he’d broken into the league with had hung ’em up.
Considering the season Brady has had with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and after what he said Monday during the first media availability prior to his 10th career Super Bowl — who wouldn’t be shocked if the age-defying quarterback continued playing professionally at his sport’s top level deep into his late 40s?
Howe, the late hockey icon, retired for the final time at age 52 in 1980, after 26 seasons in the NHL and six in the rival WHA. Thirty-two seasons! That’s still crazy, after all these years.
Brady is 43 and — health permitting — sounds intent on effectively becoming the NFL’S version of Howe. Brady is also one of his sport’s best of all-time, and he also just keeps on playing — often great, too — years and years after most of his original peers have called it quits.
The native Californian is now just a few days from completing his 21st NFL season, and the last 20 as his team’s starter. Several years ago, Brady surprised the football world by declaring his intention to keep playing until age 45. You don’t need all the fingers on one hand to count the number of NFL QBS who were still starting and playing well even at age 42.
Yet here we are, and Brady’s 45th birthday as of Wednesday will be precisely a year and a half away. That’s it. And he’s under contract with the Bucs through the 2021 season.
As with Howe, it’s not about what more Brady needs to still prove to others. He’s the NFL’S winningest player (six Super Bowl championships) and is widely considered the most accomplished, if not greatest, player in NFL history.
As with the greatest athletes in any sport’s history — Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Nolan Ryan — Brady just wants to keep proving to himself, even over his teammates, that he can do it at the highest level.
This season, Brady eventually did. More and more, as he came to better understand and feel comfortable in head coach Bruce Arians’ aggressive passing attack, Brady performed about as well as he did during the zenith of his two-decade run in New England.
He became the first passer in NFL history to throw for as many as 40 touchdowns in his first year with a team.
So, is age 45 still Brady’s end wall?
Nope. He officially blew up that wall on Monday. On the video conference call, he was asked if he is now considering playing past age 45.
“Yeah, definitely. I would definitely consider that,” Brady said, coincidentally just a couple minutes before his media session hit its end wall, 45 minutes in.
“It’s a physical sport, and the perspective I have on that is you never know kind of when that moment (to retire) is, just because it’s a contact sport. A lot of training goes into it. And it has to be a 100 per cent commitment from myself to keep doing it.
“I’ve been very fortunate over the years. (I) work really hard at making sure, physically, I can still perform at my best. Over the course of the year, you deal with various bumps and bruises and different injuries and so forth.”
Brady wouldn’t say much more than the following about when he’ll know his time has come: It’s “just going to be” about whether he is willing to continue “to make that commitment to making it part of my year-round process.”
Which, as we have heard from he and his athletic/diet guru Alex Guerrero for years now, involves a lot of science and research. And personal sacrifices.
“Football for me,” Brady said, “is part of my daily life. Just because a lot of decisions I make are always about, ‘Well, how does this impact my football? How does it impact my off-season training?’ It’s pretty well documented my (healthy living and training) approach that I’ve been taking for a period of time … How I work out and how I recover is very important. It’s critical to the success that I’ve had.”
He and his wife, former supermodel Gisele Bündchen, are parents to a son, Benjamin, born in 2009 and a daughter, Vivian, born in 2012. Brady has a son (Jack, born in 2007) from his previous relationship with actress Bridget Moynahan, whom he sees frequently.
“There are a lot of sacrifices that my family has made over a period of a long period of time,” Brady said.
“I’m grateful for their support. I’ve got a ton of friends who really support me, too, plus coaches and teammates. It really takes a lot of people. It’s a team sport. I’m very fortunate to still be able to do it.”
Brady said he chose football as his sport of preference after high school because he most loves team sports for the competitiveness and camaraderie they offer. Team sports, in fact, offer a degree of camaraderie that maybe only wartime soldiering can surpass.
“It wasn’t about 40 touchdown passes,” Brady said of this season, and how he’ll reflect on it in the months ahead. “It was about, ‘Did I do the best I could do? Did I put in the work every day to put myself into position to be the best for my team?’ That’s really where my motivation comes from.”
Which is why we can expect him to play for several more years, if he physically can. He’s having too much fun.
Still.
Just like Howe, the sports world’s ultimate ageless wonder.