Tom Brady admittedly struggled during his last year playing professional football.
“My last season was tough. I was going through [and] I had a lot of, you know, just a personal family issue,” Brady, 38, said during a Thursday, January 15, appearance on FS1’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “It was a challenge. It just took a lot out of me in terms of my ability to play.”
Brady was married to supermodel Gisele Bündchen from 2009 to 2022, separating when the NFL vet walked back his retirement plans. While Brady initially hung up his football cleats in January 2022 after a lengthy career with the New England Patriots and winning the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he changed his mind just six weeks later.
A source later confirmed to Us Weekly that Brady’s return to the field was the breaking point in his marriage. (Brady and Bündchen, 45, are parents of Benjamin, 16, and Vivian, 13. The former quarterback also shares son Jack, 18, with ex Bridget Moynahan.)
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“I had 23 years of [football] so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything by retiring. I felt, like, ‘OK, this is time,’” Brady recalled on Thursday. “I always had a goal [of] 45. I was 45 years old, I wanted to spend time with my kids [and this was] time for me to be at all my kids’ games. They’ve been to enough of their dad’s games.”
He continued, “It’s hard to give up football, too. It’s something you love to do. You love being out there with your teammates. … When I got older, I almost enjoyed practice more than playing because playing [was] almost like a relief to win. I was, like, ‘What’s another win gonna do for people?’ It’s never satisfying, even for me.”
While Brady tried to give his all to the Bucs in his last season, he still has certain regrets about how it ultimately played out.
“I wish it could have been a little bit better at the end, but it was a unique situation,” Brady acknowledged to Fox sportscaster Colin Cowherd. “[It was] a unique year for me.”
Bündchen has previously been candid about what led to her decision to divorce Brady.
“It’s not so black and white,” she told Vanity Fair in a March 2023 profile. “I have always cheered for him, and I would continue forever. If there’s one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it’s him, believe me. I want him to achieve and to conquer. I want all his dreams to come true. That’s what I want, really, from the bottom of my heart.”
According to Bündchen, she and Brady simply grew apart.
“Sometimes you grow together [and] sometimes you grow apart. When I was 26 years old and he was 29 years old, we met, we wanted a family, we wanted things together,” she told the outlet. “As time goes by, we realize that we just wanted different things, and now we have a choice to make. That doesn’t mean you don’t love the person. It just means that in order for you to be authentic and truly live the life that you want to live, you have to have somebody who can meet you in the middle, right? It’s a dance. It’s a balance.”
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Bündchen continued, “When you love someone, you don’t put them in a jail and say, ‘You have to live this life.’ You set them free to be who they are, and if you want to fly the same direction, then that’s amazing.”
Bündchen ultimately moved on with Joaquim Valente in 2023 and the pair got married in December 2025, months after welcoming a baby boy.
As for Brady, he is currently single after a string of short-lived yet star-studded flings.
“I don’t have much time for a personal life or much time for myself, but I love working, and I love my kids,” Brady told People on Wednesday, January 14. “I like to be busy and try to really stay fulfilled in the things I’m doing, so I’m working on some really cool projects and I’m involved with some great teams of people that are doing some really positive things.”
