In a move that some people probably saw coming, seven-time Super Bowl champion, Tom Brady, has announced his final retirement after a legendary career that spanned twenty-three seasons. He spent his first twenty seasons with the New England Patriots, winning six Super Bowls, and his final three with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, winning his final Lombardi Trophy with them. With Brady gone, it ends an era of NFL Hall of Fame quarterbacks drafted in the early 2000s. Brady leads the all-time record for most passing yards, most passing touchdowns, most completions, most quarterback wins, and most games started. This was all in an era in which he played alongside quarterbacks such as Peyton and Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger to name a few.

Despite Brady retiring, there are many young quarterbacks in the league who can become “The New Goat”, including: Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, and Josh Allen. I’m sure no one doubts their athletic abilities since all three are fully capable of making a deep throw or scrambling for a good amount of yards. The problem is, how long can their careers really go on for?

While Brady’s twenty-three season career is a very long time, it’s not actually an NFL record. The player with the longest career in NFL history is Morten Andersen, who played 382 games between 1982 and 2007; that’s twenty-five seasons long, which outlasts Brady by two seasons. However, Andersen was a kicker, and it’s easier to have longer careers as a kicker or a punter because they’re not constantly getting getting tackled or playing every play on offense. Quarterbacks, like Brady, are constantly pressured to start every game that they can. To put into perspective how long Brady’s career really was, let’s compare him to a quarterback from the younger generation. Mahomes started his career in 2017, and to match Brady, he would have to play until 2040. This may seem like a long way away, but when you bring up this example, it makes it seem way closer.

Most NFL fans celebrate the news of Brady’s retirement. Many of them thought that he was either a crybaby, a cheater, or that he simply got carried by Bill Belichick. But love him or hate him, it’s going to take very long time for a quarterback to reach Tom Brady’s level of pulling the heartstrings. As much as the NFL will try to look for a player as clutch as Tom Brady, it’s going to take a very long time before anyone dethrones his record and possibly even longer to take his ultimate title: “The Greatest of All Time.”