Tom Brady was reportedly pressured to retire before this season
Gisele Bundchen loves her husband, but she isn’t particularly fond of her husband’s profession.
She infamously revealed that Tom Brady suffered a concussion in 2016 and then let on that he’s had multiple concussions.
She also told Brady that she wanted him to retire after defeating the Falcons in last year’s Super Bowl. Or, according to Brady, she told him to retire three times in one night.
“I said, ‘Too bad, babe, I’m having too much fun right now,'” Brady said.
Bundchen took in even further, getting into the ear of one of Brady’s closest friends, Jay Feely, in order to get him to persuade Brady to hang them up, according to Sports Illustrated.
Feely was an NFL kicker for 14 years and prior to that was Brady’s teammate at Michigan. The two are incredibly close, and Feely and his wife vacationed with Brady and Bundchen last spring. It was then when Bundchen talked to Feely and tried to get him to persuade Brady to stop playing.
This came just weeks after Brady led the Patriots to the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history as he won his fifth ring.
Feely told Sports Illustrated that Bundchen “was dead serious.”
The article doesn’t say whether Feely followed through on Bundchen’s request or, if he did, what Brady’s response was. But Feely said he told Brady to “play as long as you can,” to which his friend smiled back and winked.
“For years he wanted to prove he belonged in this league,” Feely said. “He won three Super Bowls and still used perceived slights to motivate himself. And he’s still finding ways to motivate himself.”
Brady has devoted his life to being a football player and even his family has taken a backseat at times. Bundchen even joked about his first love being football in a caption for the trailer of the “Tom vs Time” documentary series on Facebook Watch.
“What are you willing to do and what are you willing to give up to be the best you can be?” he said.
“… If you’re going to compete against me, you better be willing to give up your life because I’m giving up mine.”
Based on that quote, as well as Bundchen’s comments and Brady’s maniacal work ethic, you can infer that Brady has eschewed a “normal” life, even by athlete standards, in order to become perhaps the greatest quarterback of all time.
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He can only add to his legend from here, and his next chance to do that will be a place that’s very special to him. The Super Bowl will take place in Minnesota, which is where Brady’s mother grew up and where a young Tom Brady spent his childhood fishing and milking cows.
“So every year we would go back [to Minnesota] in the summer and spend weeks,” said Brady. “We’d go fishing in the summer, ice fishing in the winter, and milk the cows with my grandpa and just kind of tend to the farm. It was a great experience for me, [being] born in California. …
“I’ve always felt a connection to Minnesota. It will be fun because my uncles live there, my cousins. We were just back there last year when my grandpa passed away. It’s just a great place. It’s really special to go back there.
“The last time we played in Minnesota [in Week 2 of the 2014 season], I had a lot of people come — a lot of family and extended family. So it will be a lot of great support there in Minnesota too.”
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