On Wednesday morning, ESPN’s Adam Schefter stirred up a hornet’s nest when he suggested Tom Brady might be mulling retirement. Less than 12 hours from that report, Ian Rapoport of NFL Media has come out with a definitive “Yes, Tom Brady is playing” rebuttal.
“Tom Brady is going to play in 2018,” Rapoport explained, via Chris Wesseling of NFL.com. “He said it. Everyone close to him has said it. Everyone I’ve spoken to has said it. The Patriots are going forward with the very strict and stern belief that he will be playing for 2018. I don’t get the sense that they considered any of these reports this morning about ‘maybe he doesn’t play.'”
Rapoport also noted, as others have reported, that Brady already has a passing camp set up with his New England Patriots teammates this summer. That’s not the action of a man who’s mulling retirement.
Garafolo did note, however, that Brady would like to revisit his contract situation.
“It’s not a pressing issue,” Garafolo emphasized on Wednesday’s edition of NFL Up to the Minute. “It’s not anything that is contentious right now. But Brady would absolutely be interested in revisiting this contract.”
This is hardly surprising. As things currently stand, Brady is set to count just $22 million against the cap and has a base salary of $14 million. Considering many believe he’s the greatest quarterback to ever play and still had an excellent age-40 season in 2017, he should be making at least what Kirk Cousins got on his new deal with Minnesota.
But contract aside, it seems pretty clear that we can push all the retirement talk to the curb. Brady is playing this season. Period.