Tom Brady is proving to be the most influential player in the NFL on the field, even to the point of who is playing on that very same field.
Tom Brady, now also commonly referred to as his full government name of Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr., thanks to the likes of Skip Bayless and other talking heads when he’s not being referred to as GOAT, is no doubt one of the greatest athletes to ever walk the earth. He is also the most influential, as his career is spanned three different decades that both current and future NFL players have gotten to witness, and with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers now scheduled to play the Seattle Seahawks in Munich, Germany, he also has a chance to become the first player in NFL history to win a game in four different countries.
The amount of accolades for Brady is honestly exhausting at this point, however, it is also what makes his mantle all the more impressive.
Naturally, with all this being the case, the saga that was his brief retirement, and now current un-retirement, swept the NFL world and made almost everybody forget March Madness was a thing.
Brady’s influence even reached the higher-ups involved in the NFL schedule-making process.
When Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times spoke with NFL broadcasting chief Howard Katz, Katz said that while Brady’s return forced a restart on the whole schedule-making process (via Joe Bucs Fan):
“When Tom Brady retired, we were concerned about the strength of the NFC package because there were so many terrific Tampa Bay games we were looking at,” Katz said. “Then a month later he un-retires and we sort of started all over again.”
What else is there to say? Tom Brady moves the needle just as well as he moves the football, which is just about as high of praise as possible. It’s no wonder that the primetime slates had to be adjusted now that Brady is back in the fold.
Bucs fans are certainly excited about this as well, as fans from all over now get to enjoy their team in front of a national audience. Surely, the NFL is quietly patting themselves on the back as well as more Brady means more eyeballs.
Could this “news” story be choked up to a slow news day now that the draft is in the rearview mirror? Sure. However, that doesn’t mean that Buccaneers fans can enjoy the notoriety that having the greatest of all time in Tom Brady brings them. As evident by this offseason, there’s no telling just how much longer, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the NFL, will have with him.