Not long ago, the arrival of August 3 was a reminder that Tom Brady was stretching the quarterback rubber band farther than anyone has.
Four years removed from what was his final NFL season, the boyhood 49ers fan (that changed after they picked Giovanni Carmazzi instead) is now 49.
Brady still has the arm, as anyone who watched the flag-football thing in March saw. It was enough to get him to drop a hint or two about returning to play, even if he’d have to sell the piece of the Raiders he purchased at a well-below-market rate.
Obviously, Brady isn’t coming back to play. He’s now flirting with a potential pro-wrestling run, regardless of whether it’s a mid-life crisis run amok or a strategic effort to fashion a base for a turn to presidential politics.
Brady has spread himself very thin in his post-football life, even as he has lamented in a newsletter the importance of “balance.” The sooner he finds one thing on which he can focus his attention — broadcasting or ownership — the better off he’ll be.
Indeed, it’s impossible to be the best he can be at both by actively doing both. He nevertheless seems to be intent on continuing to do both, and plenty more, indefinitely.
That’s his prerogative. And it’s our prerogative to say he would seem to be less tormented if he found the one thing that gives him maximum satisfaction.
The simple answer could be that it was playing football, and that nothing else comes close to filling that void. And so it could be that Brady isn’t doing a bunch of different things for the sake of doing a bunch of different things. He could be simply turning over rocks in an effort to find something that resonates with him the way that playing did.