Tom Brady will forever be remembered as the legendary quarterback who won six rings with the New England Patriots, but you’d never know it from his retirement announcement. After two days of conflicting reports, No. 12 finally announced he was hanging it up, an it was curiously missing a lot of names.
Tom Brady thanked everyone except the Patriots in his retirement announcement
It’s like his time in New England never existed.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
You can read Brady’s full retirement post by clicking through the slides here:
The multi-page announcement thanks so many people who were influential in Brady’s career, but it feels like a few people are missing. The complete list of the Brady thank yous are:
- His Buccaneers teammates
- Buccaneers fans
- The city of Tampa Bay
- The Glazer family
- Buccaneers GM Jason Licht
- Bruce Arians
- The rest of the Buccaneers coaching staff
- The remainder of the Bucs’ staff and employees
- Personal trainer Alex Guerrero
- His agents Don Yee and Steve Dubin
- Brady’s parents and family
- Tom’s wife and children
That’s it. Seriously. No mention of the Patriots, Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft, any of his former teammates he spent 20 years with, or the fans who supported him for the vast majority of his career.
It’s pretty stark, and when you have a retirement announcement this long it’s clear it wasn’t off the cuff and just a mistake, like a flustered award winner at the Oscar podium. This was planned, edited, carefully constructed — and he chose to just ignore his time with the Patriots existed.
That’s gotta sting if you were a New England fan who supported him for so long.
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