Brady proves me wrong --- and beats Father Time!

As unlikely as it seemed two years ago when Tom Brady was fixing to become a free agent and leave the New England Patriots after his 20-year career, Brady --- by leaving the NFL behind before he’s forced to quit due to a catastrophic injury --- wound up beating Father Time.
After leaving the Patriots in mid-March of 2020, he got two more seasons in the NFL while playing quarterback at an extremely high level and winning an unprecedented seventh Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021.
He then followed that up by coming very close to going to an 11^th Super Bowl this year when he led the Bucs back from a 27-3 halftime deficit in the Divisional Round against the Los Angeles Rams. (The Rams beat the Bucs 30-27 on a field goal as time expired, and will be in Super Bowl LVI against the Cincinnati Bengals on their home turf on Sunday, Feb. 13 after beating the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, Jan. 30.)
But Brady, who retired on Tuesday (Feb. 1) after the news leaked prematurely over the weekend that he was planning to retire, has left an incredible legacy behind him after leading the Patriots to an unbelievable string of winning and championship seasons from 2001 to 2019.
In this column, which I wrote before Brady had made up his mind to leave the Patriots in February of 2020, I speculated that he was tempting fate by not retiring while still playing at a high level, and I urged him to retire before he hurt himself. But Brady proved me wrong as he had two more highly successful seasons with the Bucs after leaving Gillette Stadium and New England behind him.
Patriot fans --- even those who are infuriated by Brady’s failure to thank Pats fans in his Instagram post of Feb. 1 in which he announced his retirement --- owe him a huge debt of gratitude because we’ll never see a more successful athlete in New England. His nine Super Bowl appearances and six wins as a Patriot rival all Boston sports legends except Bill Russell, whose 11 NBA titles in 13 years, stands at the Mount Rushmore of success by Boston-area superstars.
My hat’s off to Brady, who proved me wrong --- big time!

This column originally was published in the February 2020 edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence:

“The days of our years are three score and 10.”
-- Psalm 90, verse 10

Between the reflection that usually accompanies the turning of the page to a New Year and the non-stop speculation surrounding the future of a certain New England Patriots quarterback, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about growing older.
Who knows? Maybe in biblical times – when Abraham and Sarah became parents to Isaac at the ages of 100 and 90, respectively, Brady would have been able to play quarterback until he at least qualifies for Medicare.
But in these days, when the average life expectancy for Americans stands at 78.6, according to a 2018 Washington Post story (which also put the figures for men at 76.1 and for women at 81.1), time may be winding down on No. 12’s storied career.
At least that’s the consensus of a score of national and regional sports reporters and pundits. Many of them have been predicting Tom Brady’s demise and-or retirement for years, but we all know what happened: TB-12 proved them wrong, winning three more Super Bowls (in 2015, 2017 and 2019) for a total of six and came within one score of winning another one in 2018. For nearly two decades with few exceptions, the Patriots have practically had a standing reservation for the Big Game on the first Sunday in February.
With that record, who can blame Brady for wanting to continue to play, even though he’ll be 43 in August, one month before the season opener? He’s repeatedly said that he intends to play somewhere in 2020; it won’t be known for a while where he plays, or whether he stays with the Patriots, because he won’t become a free agent until March 18, one day after his current Patriots contract is set to expire.
Seeing Brady suit up for another team wouldn’t sit well with local fans, who have been wicked spoiled over the last two decades. Since 2002, Boston’s pro sports teams have delivered 12 championships among the Patriots (six), Red Sox (four) and Celtics and Bruins (one apiece). National sports fans think some of the Patriots' titles and the Red Sox one in 2018 were tainted, but that's a discussion for another day.
That legacy is why so many observers outside of the region are hoping that Brady will go away. In their minds, the Patriots are Public Enemy No. 1 in the same way that national fans were green with envy over the Celtics of the 1950s and ’60s while they were claiming 11 of 13 NBA championships from 1957 to 1969. It’s also why Red Sox fans couldn't stand the Yankees during their reigns in the' 50s and '60s and again in the late '90s through 2000.
Like the Patriots, the Celtics’ title run in that era was aided by the presence of an imposing superstar, center Bill Russell, who retired following the 1968 and 1969 titles, when he was the player-coach. It couldn’t have been easy for Russell to walk away, but he did.
Fifty years later, that doesn’t appear to be the case for Brady. Motivated by his TB-12 method of training, Brady seems to think he can go on, if not forever, then for up to three more seasons, which would satisfy his goal of playing until he’s 45.
That might please Brady, but at what cost? The ravages of time eventually catch up with all of us not named Abraham, Sarah or Methuselah, the latter, who, according to biblical legend, lived until the age of 969.
It’s true that many people are defying the average life expectancy data by living well into their 90s, while others are making it to 100 or more. In 2012, for example, a United Nations report said there were 316,600 centenarians worldwide, while a 2016 Smithsonianmag.com story reported that in 2014 there were 72,197 centenarians in the United States.
But they appear to be the exception as most of us can’t avoid the effects of aging. That also applies to well-conditioned athletes in spite of what they want to believe.
Baseball Hall-of-Famers Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, for instance, played too long. Mays was a shadow of himself when the longtime San Francisco Giant played for the New York Mets in 1973 and Aaron, who in 1974 became baseball’s all-time home-run leader with the Atlanta Braves, hit only 12 and 10 homers in 1975 and 1976, respectively, when he played for the Milwaukee Brewers before retiring. 
Sports history is full of such examples of once-shining superstars paying the price for their reluctance to retire. Babe Ruth, for instance, ended his career with the Boston Braves in 1935, when his skills had significantly eroded.
Patriots fans – and Brady -- should hope that the end of his career won’t come at the expense of his long-term health. That should be the most important consideration, because whether you’re a multi-millionaire athlete or a retiree living on a fixed income, the time you have left depends entirely on good health --- and that’s something that even a mega contract can’t guarantee.
LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro.