Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady decided to keep playing football in 2022. But it wasn’t an easy decision for the soon-to-be 45-year-old quarterback to make.
“You know at this stage, it’s like 55 percent yes and 45 percent no,” Brady following last night’s vanity golf match, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “That’s just the reality. It’s not that I’m not 100-percent committed, it’s just as soon as I make the commitment to do it, it’s like ‘Ugh. All right, here we go.’ It’s like running a marathon. You can’t decide two weeks before the marathon, ‘Hey, I’m going to start running.’ We got right to free agency and I felt some pressure to do it and talked to the team and organization and it all worked out.”
Of course, Brady’s decision to return to the Bucs came after the tried to finagle a path to Miami. A plan by the Dolphins to acquire Brady and former Saints coach Sean Payton imploded after former Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed a landmark discrimination lawsuit on February 1.
He’ll be a free agent in 2023. He’ll need to decide all over again whether to keep going. If he doesn’t keep going on the field, he’ll be entering the Fox broadcast booth, as the network’s top analyst.
Finally, remember this when Brady starts talking about 55 percent and 45 percent and 100 percent. He said last June that 90 percent of the things he says don’t reflect how he really feel. So there’ a 10-percent chance what he said last night is the truth.