With his broad shoulders, his frank smile and his journey to make a novelist pale, Tom Brady embodies to the extreme the “American hero” of sport. At 44, the one who had, in 2014, explained that he would only consider retirement “when[il] would be useless”, ended his capital career on Tuesday 1is February. Just days after being eliminated from the race for an eleventh Super Bowl, and at the end of a successful season once again. “Now is the time to focus my time and energy on other things”, writes the now ex-quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on his social networks.
In American football, a sport with plethoric numbers (the NFL, the North American professional league, allows up to 53 players per team), the quarterback is the beacon on which all eyes turn. The leader of an orchestra of golgoths leading his partners through announcements and passes. And Tom Brady is, without question, the greatest quarterback in history. With ten appearances in the Super Bowl (the NFL final), seven trophies, five titles of MVP (best player) of the final and three of best player of the regular season, the Californian leaves the league covered with trophies and records in all genres – including that of the most touchdown passes (624). However, at the end of the 1990s, very few would have imagined such a destiny for him.
Like the hero of Charles Aznavour’s song who “already saw himself at the top of the bill”, Tom Brady left his province at the age of 18, determined to seize life. Far from his native California, the young man chose the University of Michigan, which nevertheless has several players at his post. “I wanted to play against the best, he explains afterwards, questioned par NBC Sports. Adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown. But for anyone with skill and courage, the danger disappears. »
The advent of the “Comeback kid”
Selected only at the 199e position and in the sixth round of the 2000 Draft, young Tom Brady joined Massachusetts and the New England Patriots. In an interview in 2021, the player engages in a lucid self-analysis: “There were reasons why I was drafted so late: I’m still not the biggest, the strongest, the fastest. » But the physique is not everything for the quarterbacks, these generals of the armies of players. And from his university career, Brady imposed himself by his tireless will to win, which quickly earned him the nickname of “Comeback kid” – for his propensity to tirelessly bring his teams back to the mark.
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