Jim Gray: Tom Brady, retirement and perfection – what you don't know about legendary quarterback

Editor's note: The following is excerpted from author and sportscaster Jim Gray's  "Talking to GOATs: The Moments You Remember and the Stories You Never Heard" (William Morrow, November 2020). Gray has a long professional and personal relationship with legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady. At Westwood One, Gray is the studio host for NFL Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl, with broadcast partner Tom Brady, the most decorated quarterback in Super Bowl history.

I’ve often heard Tom Brady mock the idea of retirement. It’s just not something he spends much time thinking about. "I’m retiring to what?" he’ll ask.

"Why does everybody want me to leave?" he’ll say. He’s not sure what else he would be doing right now, at age forty-three in 2021, if he wasn’t playing football.

He thinks the masses want him to leave so that someone else can win. He’s not wrong there.

We’ve become more friends than broadcast partners. He has taught me so much about football, teamwork, friendship, sharing, humility, and trust. Tom trusts those close to him because he trusts himself.

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He is willing to give of himself in an unselfish manner and goes out of his way to help others. He is a genuine, humble, caring, and loving man. Not perfect, but striving to be.

We enjoy spending time together, whether we’re golfing, sharing a meal, or just hanging out.

To see Brady’s career up close, from almost anonymous to the king of the most popular sport in America, from the 199th pick to the man who can now wear six Super Bowl rings, well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Many people ask how we became such good friends, this Hall of Fame quarterback and sixty-year-old broadcaster.

I’m not sure. Our relationship grew organically. We saw the value in each other as people.

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Tom came to see I didn’t view him as just a quarterback, and hedidn’t compartmentalize me as a sportscaster, dropping the barriers of mistrust.

I heard Brady say something once about missing out on the rest of his life. The interviewer wondered if he ever worried about all that he had been absent for while preparing himself for football games—graduations, weddings, birthdays.

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He had indeed missed a lot of life in twenty seasons. But he didn’t buy that notion. He felt good about all he could do for his family and friends and even better when he made it to the Super Bowl and could share his success with them.

I’ve spent time around many of the greatest athletes to ever play sports, from Dr. J to Be Like Mike to the Greatest of All Time. But to see Brady’s career up close, from almost anonymous to the king of the most popular sport in America, from the 199th pick to the man who can now wear six Super Bowl rings, well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

He’s still chasing perfection.

I tell him it’s my feeling that he has touched the concept in a way that few human beings ever will. The group of athletes who can say that is remarkably small.

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Brady will hedge, displaying that typical humility, but privately he will acknowledge what he has never said publicly.

That I’m right.

That’s what both torments him and drives him forward. He has thrown the perfect pass, played the perfect quarter, and led the perfect comeback. He wants to be able to do it again, and again. But he can’t. No one can.

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You can touch perfection, but you cannot hold on to it, or take it home with you.

If you are great enough, you can borrow it, like Tom has.

From "TALKING TO GOATS" by Jim Gray. Copyright © 2020 by Scratchy Productions, Inc. Excerpted courtesy of William Morrow, HarperCollins Publishers.

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