Buccaneers GM Jason Licht said at the NFL scouting combine that Tampa Bay was “leaving the light on” for Tom Brady, in hopes that the greatest ever would return for a 23rd season.
Licht smirked as he said it, so some took that as a joke. Maybe they shouldn’t have.
And the way these guys were talking, it turns out, wasn’t an accident. A few days after Licht said what he did, I ran into Buccaneers vice president of football administration Mike Greenberg and, as we caught up on family and football, Greenberg told me he’d joked with people within the team that if Brady reversed course and came back, he’d be willing to name his third son (he and his wife were expecting) Tom Brady Greenberg.
For the record, Tom Brady Greenberg never came to pass.
But the actual Tom Brady? Yup, he’s back.
Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports
The 44-year-old quarterback posted on Twitter and Instagram early Sunday night that he’s ending his 40-day retirement immediately, writing, “These past two months I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come. But it’s not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I’m coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa. Unfinished business LFG.”
I won’t sit here and tell you I expected this on a Sunday night in March—I thought if it was happening, it’d be way later in the offseason. But the breadcrumbs Licht left at that podium, and Greenberg left with me, were really all over the place.
For one, Brady refused to slam the door shut when given the chance on his podcast by host Jim Gray a month ago, saying, “You never say never. … I feel very good about my decision. I don’t know how I’ll feel six months from.” And even when he initially announced the retirement, it was a bit wonky, and rushed, and didn’t feel like the sort of production you might expect.
Plus, anyone who knows Brady knows his drive to keep playing really isn’t from anything but his love for football, his teammates and maybe most of all an unparalleled passion for competition. And it’s not exactly shocking that he figured out it’d be hard to satisfy that passion outside of the sport, or that not satisfying it might be a particularly frustrating thing when he still has bullets in the gun (he’s said he thinks he can play until 45 for forever).
Then, there’s how the Bucs have conducted themselves, outside of their public comments. There was no teardown of a core that won 29 games the last two years, when conventional wisdom held there’d be a reset after Brady retired. Over the weekend, Tampa restructured veteran defensive lineman Vita Vea’s contract to create additional cap space.
And Brady’s timing isn’t a mistake, either. Monday at noon, free agents will start to enter into agreements with outside teams, and the Buccaneers have a boatload of them (12 of The MMQB’s top 221). So if he was going to return to Tampa, doing it now would give the Bucs the best chance to sell as many of their free agents as possible—Carlton Davis, Ryan Jensen, Alex Cappa, Ndamukong Suh, Jason Pierre-Paul, Leonard Fournette and Rob Gronkowski among them—on doing the same.
What’ll ease the rest of this is that Licht, Greenberg and Bruce Arians built the roster last year for it. When Brady signed his extension in 2021, he told the Bucs he planned to play through the 2022 season, so Tampa constructed the team, and its contracts that way, where the model would be sustainable for two years, not one.
After that? Well, really, who cares?
Having Brady back means competing for a championship in the here and now.
Which makes it worth leaving the light on for a guy. Or even naming your kid after him.
