TAMPA, Fla. — Now you’ve heard it straight from the GOAT’s mouth: Tom Brady still is undecided about whether to continue playing football.
Appearing on his weekly Let’s Go podcast with Jim Gray, Brady said he hasn’t decided whether to continue playing.
“It was a good week and I’m just going through the process I said I was going through,” Brady said Monday night. “Sometimes it takes some time to really evaluate how you feel, what you want to do and I think when the time is right I’ll be ready to make a decision one way or the other, just like I said last week.”
Brady was asked if he had a timeline for making an announcement.
“I’ll know when the time is right,” he said. “I’m very blessed to have played as long as I have and as things have gone on in the later parts of my career, whether that was five years ago or even this year, I know there’s a lot of interest in when I’m going to stop playing and I understand that. It’s not that I don’t recognize that. It’s just when I’ll know, and when I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m not going to race to some conclusion on that.”
Brady’s announcement only extends the speculation, which began Friday with a report by CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora that his retirement was “imminent.”
On Saturday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Jeff Darlington jointly reported that Brady had decided to walk away from the NFL after 22 seasons. Multiple networks played Brady’s greatest highlights and interviewed former teammates, and social media buzzed with congratulatory messages from the sports world.
Brady’s agent, Donald Yee, released a statement that only Brady could speak about his future while neither confirming nor denying the accuracy of the reports.
Coach Bruce Arians and general manager Jason Licht believed that Brady remained undecided.
What was Brady’s reaction to news of his “retirement?”
“There’s a good line that I’m responsible for what I say and do and not responsible for what others say or do,” Brady said. “One thing I’ve learned about sports is you control what you can control and what you can’t, you leave to others. I know we’re in such an era of information and people want to be in front of the news often and I totally understand that. I understand that’s the environment we’re in.
“But I think for me, it’s literally day to day for me, trying to do the best I can every day, evaluate things as they come and trying to make a great decision for me and my family.”
Brady acknowledged he was out of the country when the news broke and indicated he didn’t want to upstage the NFC and AFC championship games.
“I know how hard those players work on Sunday to prepare for that. ... The focus should be on those great games,” he said. “I was trying to enjoy a nice weekend and it didn’t turn out that way because my phone got really busy, but that’s just part of being in the situation I’m in.”
