Why Tom Brady Should Have Stayed Retired

On Sunday, the much maligned Carolina Panthers defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 21-3 in a game that has been widely characterized as one of the biggest upsets of Bucs Quarterback Tom Brady’s career. The Bucs won the Super Bowl in 2020 behind Brady’s on-field leadership, further solidifying his reputation as the greatest quarterback of all time.

Last year, he announced he would retire. Then 40 days later he “unretired.”

And so far this season, Brady is left with a sub-.500 record (3-4). That’s the first time he’s found himself looking up at .500 since 2002.

There were all kinds of reasons the Panthers should have been easy prey for the GOAT: they had an interim coach, a third-string quarterback and had lost 12 of their past 13 games dating back to last season. But the size of the upset seems less important than the decline of Brady as a player and, more importantly, a leader. As the old saying goes, it certainly appears he has stayed one season too long. He should have retired after putting the cherry on top of his career of winning Sundays by winning a Super Bowl without the Patriots.

Athletes in individual sports, like tennis, don’t face some of the same problems as their powers diminish and they drop in the rankings. With nothing left to prove, for example, Serena Williams can enjoy seeing how far she can go in the U.S. Open. And when she finally loses, she can even admit to her fan base that she was finally learning how to enjoy the game again. She can do this with the added consolation of having just about everyone at Arthur Ashe Stadium, along with the entire broadcasting crew, cheering her every swing.

Ditto for Roger Federer, who got to choose his own retirement party by pairing himself with his long-time rivals Raphael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in a doubles match. How cool and fun is that?

But such is not the way it works in team sports where the leader not only brings his or her skills and production to the game, they also bring leadership. Think of all the teams that have included extraordinary talents and couldn’t win championships. Talent and production will get you points, assists, hits, homeruns and so on, but they won’t guarantee a championship and certainly not a dynasty.

It doesn’t matter what kind of organization we’re talking about; leaders make everyone around them better by understanding what their teammates need from them and each other in order to be successful. Leaders model and transmit the values of the coach and organization as new players come into the fold, and leaders inspire their teammates by the sheer force of their success and talent. When age claims this talent, as it claims all things in this life, the team doesn’t just lose functionality; it loses some of that precious psychic glue that binds a collection of individuals as a team.

The problem of leading past your prime is compounded by the tendency for former stars to believe they still have it in them – not only to compete but also to do it at the highest level. They have a hard time seeing what the camera reveals all too clearly: less heat and laser like accuracy in Brady’s pass up the middle, resulting in an incompletion that we would swear he never missed before. When the six-time NBA championship player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played one season longer then he ought to have, he not only looked pathetic, he may have made his whole Los Angeles Lakers team look that way.

“If some of Kareem's teammates want to bash him for what's gone wrong, they'd better take a long look in the mirror,” said the Los Angeles general manager Jerry West at the time. West was a smart GM and refused to throw Jabbar under the bus, but he may have missed on this shot. It would be difficult for the big man’s teammates to see him huffing and puffing up and down the court.

As for Brady, all those who watched him lead his teams to victory through the years and exemplify grace under pressure, deserve to wish him well before he breaks another Microsoft notebook on the sidelines in frustration. None of us benefit from that, and least of all his current teammates.

All of us age out of our profession. One trait of a leader is to know ourselves well enough to do so with grace.