Before the game went wild, before there was a tense exchange of final possessions, before we started updating the TB12 website waiting for the cleverly curated I do not retire ad that seemed to be drawing us in, there was a 44-year-old man taking an empty shotgun blast at his own 25-yard line, down 24 points, midway through the third quarter. And many of us, including Rams coach Sean McVay and quarterback Matt Stafford, thought the game was just getting started.
Think about that for a moment. Regardless of Tom Brady’s status as the greatest player in NFL history, he was also the oldest active player in the league this year; playing in an offense that has lost some of its star power; losing by more than three touchdowns; facing a defense that contained Von Miller, Jalen Ramsey and Aaron Donald; and a lot of us shrugged it off, we casually referenced Super Bowl LI when the Patriots came back from a 28-3 deficit to stun the Falcons in overtime, and thought it was only a matter of time before we had some football in our hands.
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After the Buccaneers’ 30-27 loss to the Rams on Sunday, a game Tampa Bay tied with 47 seconds left, Brady certainly didn’t commit to his future. He told reporters he would take it day by day, prompting some confusing reports earlier in the week that he may finally be entertaining the idea of hanging it. While we refuse to believe it, and it seems strange that Brady’s desire to play until he’s forced to put his heart and brain into an Erhardt-Perkins avatar capable of carrying him from one side of the field to the other is suddenly extinguished, Sunday was an absolutely perfect game. for Brady to finish his career.
Other than the final score, there was no better series of moments that could define Brady’s career. His late game comeback surge was very characteristic. His precision was emblematic of the kind of unconscious mastery he has cultivated. Sure, there were a few calls that went his way and a missed field goal, but this happens in every game. Few quarterbacks in league history have been able to take the crumbs of favorable circumstances that fall on their laps and turn them into a surprising comeback win in the divisional round of the playoffs.
While it wouldn’t be the neat narrative of Peyton Manning leading the Broncos to Super Bowl victory, it would be something almost more admirable: the greatest player of all time, still in his prime, churning balls with greater speed and accuracy. . than the kind of new age passerby we celebrate much more often these days. It would mean coming out undeniably on top. Tom Brady’s father once said The New York TimesThe magazine that no matter what, your child’s quest for timelessness can’t end well. While he was referring specifically to a potential finish in New England, the comment was based on his son’s desire to continue throwing a football until every single general manager in the league refused to pay him for the privilege. . On Sunday, Brady looked like a man years away from that kind of forced retirement. If he really decided to retire now, he would do so on a craft stage from which we can still celebrate him for the best he was. If you want to sign a five-year contract, we might as well make sense of it.
Based on his Tampa Bay experiment and his success at a non-Belichickian outpost, we’re also ready to believe Brady is capable of anything. Could he resurrect the Browns? Save the bears? Could he join the Giants and melt the hearts of the biggest and baddest media market in the country? Could he find the coach who overlooked him, prompting Brady to say “you’re going to keep that son of a bitch—–?” on an HBO camera and ask him if he’s still happy with his choice?
Here’s another reason Brady stops and makes us think: Imagine, for a second, if he drags this out another season or two. Imagine if one day we are waiting for The Decision Part II, when his contract ends in Tampa Bay and he can entertain the free agent market. We could have an NFL analyst who is paid to talk all day on TV seriously preparing a career retrospective on one side of his mouth and a serious heart-stopping breakdown on the other of how he would instantly lift several dying. franchises in contention for the title at the age most of us start measuring ourselves for orthotics and switch to red wine because all those other things are hard on my stomach.
As much as we joke about Brady’s longevity as some sort of counterweight to our enjoyment of the NFL, we’ll miss him when he’s gone. We’ll see the perfectly crisp black-and-white Twitter photo of him walking out of an ominous soccer battlefield and wish we didn’t take it all in a little longer. We will miss playoff games like the one we saw on Sunday. We’ll miss seeing a rival manager so nervous, pacing the sidelines 24 points as if about to set off a burglar alarm off a priceless work of art. The fact that Tampa Bay didn’t win the game feels irrelevant in a lot of ways, because Brady did his part. He made the unthinkable seem routine again.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.