Tom Brady spoke candidly about his plans for the future after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were defeated from the playoffs, and his intent to spend the time off giving his children and wife what they “deserve” from him.
Days later, on 29January, he announced his retirement from the game.
The NFL quarterback, 44, discussed what’s next for him during Monday’s episode of his SiriusXM podcast Let’s Go!, where he revealed that he isn’t sure “what’s next,” and is in “no rush” to figure it out.
Acknowledging that it’s just a day after the season, the football star, who frequently faces questions about his eventual retirement, said he’ll “know when I know”.
“I think for all of us, you know, we can all decompress a bit. It’s been six straight months of football, every day consumed by day in and day out football,” he explained, adding: “I think now it’s just some time to spend some time with my family and spend some time with my kids.”
The conversation was then interrupted by Brady’s daughter Vivian, nine, who interjected with her own “hello,” prompting the athlete to describe his daughter as his “little angel”.
Brady then took the opportunity to acknowledge how important both football and his family are to him, with the quarterback, who just concluded his 22nd season, explaining: “I think as I’ve gotten older, I think the best part is... football is extremely important in my life. And it means a lot to me. And I care a lot about what we’re trying to accomplish as a team. And I care a lot about my teammates.”
However, according to Brady, the biggest difference since he’s gotten older is that he’s now a father, and he cares “about [his children] a lot as well”.
In addition to daughter Vivian, Brady also shares son Benjamin, 12, with wife Gisele Bündchen. The athlete is also father to son Jack, 14, who he shares with ex Bridget Moynahan.
“You know, they’ve been my biggest supporters, my wife is my biggest supporter,” he continued, adding that it “pains her to see me get hit out there”.
Brady then acknowledged that Bündchen “deserves what she needs from me as a husband and my kids deserve what they need from me as a dad”.
“I’m going to spend some time with them and give them what they need because they’ve really been giving me what I need the last six months to do what I love to do,” he said. “You know, I said this a few years ago, it’s what relationships are all about. It’s not always what I want. It’s what we want as a family. And I’m gonna spend a lot of time with them and figure out in the future what’s next.”
At the time the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who was one of the oldest active players in the NFL, explained that he hadn’t thought about whether it is time to say “goodbye,” as his enjoyment “comes from the competition”.
“More so than anything, even yesterday, I was thinking about competing. I was thinking about, this whole year, about competing. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than that,” he said, adding that he’ll think about “post-career” when “the time comes to”.
This was not the first time that Brady had spoken about the difficulty of balancing his career and his family, as he previously revealed on the podcast in October that he and his wife were facing a “very difficult issue” because the supermodel, who retired from the runway in 2015, still feels there are “things that she wants to accomplish”.
“I think my wife has, you know, held down the house for a long time now,” the seven-time Super Bowl winner explained. “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.
“But that’s an issue, and it’s a very difficult issue to reconcile without just saying: ‘Hey, it’s time to retire.’”
