by - Tom Brady says he’s really going to be retired from the NFL this time around.
- Brady’s next chapter is already taking shape, with a deal to join Fox as a broadcaster in 2024.
- Legendary player Mike Tirico and fellow stars turned commentators Kurt Warner and Andrew Whitworth have high hopes for Brady’s next move.
PHOENIX – Tom Brady’s second retirement looks set to last.
A bit of paperwork that Brady filled out on Friday, according to ESPN, indicated that he really wasn’t coming back this time around. After Brady’s brief 40-day retirement experiment last season, it’s certainly been worth checking out again.
Brady is looking at his next chapter and seems to have a plan in the works.
While hanging up his boots, Brady won’t be leaving football entirely, as he has already signed a mega-deal with Fox to become a broadcaster in the future. The deal was struck during Brady’s brief retirement last year and is worth $375 million over 10 years, according to the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand.
It’s not hard to see why Brady said yes to the show — that payday is worth more than Brady has earned in all of his 23 seasons in the NFL, and he retired as the highest-earning player in league history. But Brady isn’t jumping in right away, instead he plans to take the rest of this year off to decompress and study before heading to the booth in 2024.
During Super Bowl week, Insider asked several celebrity commentators if they had any advice for Brady as he made his way to the booth. In general, everyone believed that he could quickly become a legend both as a broadcaster and as a player.
“Enjoy it,” NBC play-by-play man Mike Tirico told Insider as his advice to Brady on the red carpet ahead of the NFL Honors on Thursday. “He’s work, but Tom isn’t afraid to work hard. I think he’ll do really well.”
“I have a feeling Tom Brady is going to handle this very well,” concurred Andrew Whitworth, who went from playing to talking at the table for Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” broadcasts last year. “He has all the means and everything you could want in his career. He’s done it all. I’m sure he’ll handle it very well.”
For Whitworth, the same strength that propelled him to excel on the field has propelled him through his radio career, and he thinks the same will be true for Brady.
Andrew Whitworth talks with Richard Sherman and Ryan Fitzpatrick on the set of “Thursday Night Football”.
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
“Everything is a learning process,” Whitworth said. “If you’re hardwired to be really good at what you do, you’re hardwired to want to succeed, so I think you’re always chasing and evaluating yourself. When I was a gamer, probably too many times, I was always my harshest critic. . Now I’m off the field too.”
“It’s about being yourself. That’s what people love most is seeing you be yourself,” he continued.
Kurt Warner, another top quarterback who built a second act as an announcer, also had high hopes for Brady but suggested he get to work fast.
“Find the next thing quickly,” Warner told Insider would be his advice to Brady. “That’s what you realize when you get to that point of retirement. You’ll never get over the thrill of playing, the challenge of playing against the best in the world. The feeling that it’s for three hours on Sunday. You never get over that, so need to find something else very quickly.
Tom Brady speaks with Kurt Warner before the Super Bowl in 2015.
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
“We need to find out if we can do something else well,” Warner said. “You know, when I retired, and I’m sure Tom is also going through this: ‘Can I do anything else well?'”
“Especially when you’ve done it as well as he has for so long, but I think he’s going to embrace the challenge and it’s going to be great,” he continued.
While Brady won’t immediately jump into the booth, if he starts school in 2023, he could start working as an announcer in 2024.
Clearly, those who made the leap before him believe in his ability.
