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Tom Brady talks about how he plans to spend his final season in the NFL amid his divorce from Gisele Bündchen.
Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champion, spoke to ML Football and offered insight into his 23rd and final season, which ends in 2023. “Last season was tough,” Brady, 48, confessed.
“I had a lot of personal family issues,” he continued, apparently referring to his divorce from Bundchen in October 2022. “And it was a challenge and it took a lot out of me in terms of…ability to play.”
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Brady permanently retired from the NFL in 2023, although he originally announced his retirement in February 2022. He returned for his final season and played his third season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He previously played 20 seasons with the New England Patriots.
“I’ve been playing soccer for 23 years, so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything when I retired,” he told MLFootball. “I always felt like I had a goal of being 45. Now that I’m 45, I wanted to spend time with my kids. I thought, OK, now’s the time to go to all of my kids’ games. They’ve been to enough of their dad’s games.”
Brady and Bündchen, 45, have two children, Benjamin (16) and Vivian (13). Brady also has a son, Jack, 18, with ex Bridget Moynahan. Bundchen and her current husband, Joaquin Valente, gave birth to their first child, a son, in February 2025.
Brady told MLFootball that he “tried to give as much effort as I could” in his final season.
“I felt like I owed it to my teammates and coaches to give everything I had,” he said. “I wish I could have been a little better at the end. But it was a special situation and a special year for me.”
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The superstar athlete’s comments about marriage come after he recently spoke with PEOPLE about prioritizing children and work.
“I don’t have a lot of time for my personal life or myself, but I love my job and I love my kids,” Brady told PEOPLE at the Fanatics Studio launch party on Tuesday, January 13.
“I like to be busy and I like to stay really happy with what I’m doing, so I’m working on some really great projects and I’m joining a team of great people who are doing some really positive things,” he continued.
While the retired footballer is focused on his children, he was spotted getting cozy with influencer Alix Earle at a New Year’s Eve party in St Barths. At the event, the two were seen talking intimately and touching each other, and a video of their flirting quickly surfaced.
Before Earl, Brady was last romantically linked to supermodel Brooks Nader in 2024. A source told PEOPLE in July of the same year that the two were “casually dating.”
