Seth Wickersham weighs in on Tom Brady retirement decision

ESPN writer Seth Wickersham has known Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady since his days with the New England Patriots. So if there is anybody that could get some light on the thoughts of Brady after the premature announcement of his retirement, Wickersham would be your guy. And during an interview on the Greg Hill Show, that’s just what he did, when he weighed in on the topic.

During the interview, Hill asked how frustrated does Wickersham believe Brady is after the announcement.

“Yeah, it’s an excellent question. I mean indications are that he would be incredibly frustrated about it. But in the same sense, the last two months of the season were just different. And you know I heard about it, obviously, Adam Schefter and Jeff Darlington heard about it. You know, it just seemed like that he was more interested, he started to get more interested in some of the things that he had started to create this season that really had nothing to do with football; most obviously the Brady brand,” said Wickersham.

Brady’s agent, Don Yee, said in a text message that Brady’s retirement is not a done deal simply due to the fact that the 44-year-old quarterback has yet to issue a statement publicly.

Wickersham further explains.

The seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback will go down as the best quarterback of all time in the minds of the many. Nobody was a fiercer competitor, and nobody defied Father Time like Brady. And a testament to that was his lack of showing signs of slowing down in his second season in Tampa Bay, throwing for 5,316 yards and 43 touchdowns this past season.

However, all good things must come to an end sooner or later. And there were reports about a possible retirement before this one, as Wickersham explained.

“I think that when other than Jeff had that report, I think it was a week ago, that he was you know noncommittal towards returning I think that was a that was a big tell, because I think it had been the feeling in the building and certainly, the feeling that people close to Tom, that you know even though he had stated his goal to play until he was age 45 leaving this year started to discuss playing you know playing into his 50’s that this looks like it. And so, I don’t think the news is necessarily surprising but speak to your point how frustrating it might be for him, I think it hasn’t been frustrating but probably also not surprising because again, word had just started to leak out towards the end of the season,” said Wickersham.

Despite denying he is indeed retiring, there are a good amount of experts in the NFL that believed the writing has been on the wall for Brady. And those same people have not backed down from the belief that Brady is retiring, and now say it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” he will do it this offseason.