I was just as shocked as everyone today to see the rumors of Tom Brady's retirement from the NFL. Coming off a season where he led the league in both touchdowns and passing yards, Brady surely still has at least two or three good seasons of football left in him, as physically incomprehensible as that might sound at age 44. But unfortunately I'm not a sports analyst. I'm a journalist, and if you're looking for a storybook ending, there's not a much better moment for him to retire than this one.
Throughout his entire career, Brady has made a name for himself as the grandmaster of game-winning drives and insane fourth-quarter comebacks. It's a bold move to walk into the NFL already bearing the nickname "The Comeback Kid," but at every step of his journey, Brady found a way to not only renew that nickname, but reclaim it in even more dramatic fashion than the previous times. So when the Rams went up 27-3 against the Buccaneers in last Sunday's NFC Divisional Game, it wasn't a matter of "if Brady can do it again." It was a matter of "how he will do it again."
And sure, he was aided pretty heavily by a Los Angeles Rams offense that seemed allergic to holding onto the football. But nevertheless, Brady, as he has always done in the past, stayed calm and collected throughout the second half of the game, methodically pulling together scoring drives for the Buccaneers that culminated with them miraculously tying the game 27-27 with only 42 seconds left. The Comeback Kid had struck again, pulling his team out of a 24-point hole in only a quarter and a half of football. Those watching witnessed one of the greatest Brady comeback performances in his entire career, and although he may have looked sharper in previous outings, the outcome was unsurprisingly the same.
But there were still 42 seconds left in the game, long enough for Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford to complete two bombs to Cooper Kupp and get his team in position to drill the game-winning field goal as time expired. The Rams won 30-27 in a fashion chillingly similar to Brady's first Super Bowl title in 2002, where Brady drove the Patriots the length of the field in a tied game to get Adam Vinatieri in a spot to kick the title-winning field goal.
Except this time, someone had out-comebacked the Comeback Kid.
And isn't that the way the Tom Brady era of football is supposed to close? A younger quarterback pulling off an even more remarkable 4th quarter drive than Tom Brady, as if the torch was being passed off? I know some would have wished for the Tom Brady movie to end with a Super Bowl title, and if this was a Hallmark movie, that would have been the preference. But the story wasn't supposed to end with another championship. Brady already has seven of those. It was supposed to end with a reminder of just how much he changed the game of football and inspired the next very promising generation of NFL quarterbacks, and that's exactly what we got.
My hat is off to you, Tom Brady, the undisputed greatest quarterback in NFL history.
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