Tom Brady Reveals Why He Ended NFL Retirement

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback and future Hall-of-Famer Tom Brady publicly addressed his decision to end his retirement over a month ago. The 44-year-old spoke to the media during a roundtable following The Match, a golf competition that featured other NFL players Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.

Brady stated that his initial decision to retire was due to commitments to his family. Although he was 100 percent sure that he’d stay retired, his decision to prematurely end it was due to the activity during free agency. “It’s not that I’m not 100% 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.”

Brady told the media that he hadn’t been fully ready to retire when he made his decision but cited his responsibility to his wife and kids. “So the responsibilities are many people taking care of me and things that I have off the field that are really important to me like my family, my kids, my wife’s done an amazing job of that,” he said. “That’s a big commitment from her, so it’s harder when you get older. I don’t even think they know what’s coming. Aaron [Rodgers] knows these things because your life gets bigger as we all do, our life gets more full – there are more responsibilities.”

His contract is set to expire after the 2022 NFL season but there has been no confirmation on what the then-45-year-old would do with his career.

Brady’s decision to un-retire came after the retirement of Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians, and the promotion of defensive coordinator Todd Bowles to the head coaching position. Arians won a Super Bowl with the team in 2021 and now takes a front-office role with the team.