Before Sunday night's Tampa Bay-Dallas game, NBC played a video of Michael Jordan talking about how he took almost two years off before coming back but Tom Brady's retirement did not last even two months. Jordan described the deep attachment that he and Brady feel for their respective sports, and he urged everyone to enjoy watching Brady because such greatness is rarely seen. Few people would understand Brady's retirement and return better than Jordan. Jordan did not win his first game back, but he did lead the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive NBA titles before retiring again (and coming back one more time, with less success).
In his first game back from his retirement--and is it really a retirement if you did not miss any regular season games?--Brady led the Buccaneers to a 19-3 win over the Cowboys, lifting his personal record against Dallas to 7-0. Brady became the oldest starting quarterback in NFL history (45 years old), and a video montage shown during the game proved that his release time and throwing motion now are indistinguishable from his release time and throwing motion from early in his career and from the middle of his career. Brady's numbers were solid but not great by his lofty standards--18-27, 212 yards, one touchdown, one interception, 87.3 passer rating--but he made the throws that needed to be made, he mixed the pass with the run very well, and he limited his mistakes to one bad throw, the interception that he freely admitted was his fault.
During his postgame interview with NBC's Melissa Stark, Brady said, "I always play the game for my team, my teammates and the organization. Just being around them is something I always enjoy. It keeps me very grounded, very humble. I feel like just one of the guys. Not many places where I can go where I feel like just one of the guys, but the locker room's definitely one of those places."
Last season, Brady led the NFL with a career-high 5316 passing yards plus 43 passing TDs (the second highest total of his career, topped only by his 50 TDs in 2007 for the 16-0 New England Patriots). From the standpoints of physical skill set and motivation level, it would seem that Brady can be an elite quarterback for the foreseeable future--but football is a violent game in which a season or career can come to a crashing halt after just one play. Brady has been incredibly durable save for the 2008 season when he missed 15 games after tearing his ACL in the opener, but Sunday night provided a reminder of how tenuous NFL life can be: late in the game, Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott's right hand crashed into the hands of a pass rusher on two consecutive plays, resulting in a hand injury that apparently will require surgery and cause him to miss several weeks (the exact diagnosis will not be official until further examination is done, but Prescott and Dallas owner Jerry Jones both stated the expectation that Prescott will be out for an extended period).
Brady may ride off into the sunset as a Super Bowl champion, but he already had that opportunity after the 2020 season and instead he returned in 2021. Jordan kept coming back until his balky, swollen knees forced him to accept that the end had arrived. I once compared the end of Jordan's career to the end of Jerry Rice's career:
There is a beauty and a sadness to the way that Jordan and Rice's careers ended. There is great beauty in loving the game so much that you continue to play even though you have nothing left to prove and you risk being mocked by cynical writers, young fans who don't remember your greatness and jealous rivals who couldn't touch you in your prime but salivate at the chance to embarrass you now. Yet, there is sadness when one watches a singular performer unable to dominate the game in his usual manner. Ray Lewis can be heard on NFL Films saying, "The same thing that will make you laugh will make you cry." Watching the end of Air Jordan's career and the conclusion of Flash 80's run, I understand that statement perfectly. I take two memories from Jordan's Wizards career: first, his soaring, two handed block of Ron Mercer, pinning the ball to the glass to preserve a win against Jordan's old team, the Chicago Bulls. That clip was later shown in a Nike commercial, with a Jordan voiceover intoning "Love is playing every game like it's your last." I'm not ashamed to say that I got goose bumps every time that spot ran; second, the image of Jordan dragging his bad leg up and down the court, trying to act like everything was fine—his heart and determination made you smile and the intimations of his (and our) mortality made you cry. For Rice, my two memories of his dénouement are the aforementioned Monday night comeback from the ACL injury and the fact that last year, on a Seattle team with wide receivers who drop so many passes they should change their names to Edward Scissorhands, Seattle did not even attempt to utilize him at the end of a 27-20 playoff loss to the St. Louis Rams.
Jerry Rice's retirement leaves me feeling the same way that I did after Michael Jordan’s last season with the Wizards: I am sad that Jerry Rice will no longer play in the NFL—and yet I am glad that he left now rather than spend a season sitting on the bench. Yes, the same thing that will make you laugh will make you cry.
Kobe Bryant once vowed to play until the wheels fell off, and he pretty much accomplished that, summoning up the requisite energy to drop 60 points in his career finale after being hobbled by multiple injuries that limited him to just 107 out of a possible 246 games in his final three seasons.
Will Brady leave on top, or will he ride it out until the wheels fall off? Jordan is right that we should savor Brady's greatness--not only because such greatness is rare, but because it could end suddenly and unexpectedly.
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