Tom Brady announced on Sunday that he would be returning to the NFL after a short-lived retirement.
Although the timing of the proclamation was a bit surprising, the core message was not. Nobody expected Brady to stay away given the weird and abrupt nature of his retirement to begin with.
One of the immediate questions that arose after Brady’s big comeback statement was how his wife, Gisele Bundchen, ultimately felt about it.
Many believed that Bundchen played a vital role in him calling it quits to begin with.
Late Sunday, Bundchen took to Instagram to react:
“Here we go again! Let’s go Lovvvey! Let’s go Bucs!” Bundchen wrote along with a fire emoji.
It has been something of an open secret that Bundchen wants Brady to retire, primarily for health reasons but also just because of how his playing impacts both their lives. During a podcast with Larry Fitzgerald and Jim Gray last fall, the legendary quarterback got brutally honest about how that factored into things.
“But that’s an issue, and it’s a very difficult issue to reconcile without just saying, ‘Hey, it’s time to retire.’ And I think there’s, you know, we’re coming to the end here too, so I don’t want to miss any of the kids’ stuff,” he said at the time.
“I think my wife has, you know, held down the house for a long time now, and I think there’s things that she wants to accomplish. You know, she hasn’t worked as much in the last 10, 12 years just raising our family and kind of committing to being in a life in Boston and then moving to Florida.”
All that being said – the pull to return was just too strong for Brady.
It’s worth remembering that Brady’s 2022 season ended with a lot of headaches. Thus, it would certainly make sense if he need a little more time to think things through this time around. And if the media accidentally forced his hand by announcing his retirement too quickly, then this was all a pretty predictable chain of events.
Reactions have already begun to pour in regarding Brady. Paige Spiranac’s response to his comeback, for instance, immediately went viral. It probably won’t be the last to do so.
Brady is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. So he can retire and unretire as much as he wants and nobody will care. Just the privilege of being able to watch him play the game earns him as many of these false-starts on post-NFL life as he needs.
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