After 23 seasons, seven NFL Championship titles, 286 wins and 649 touchdown passes, the greatest quarterback of all-time, Tom Brady, has called time on his career.

For the second year in a row, Brady chose to announce his retirement on 1st February, only unlike his six-week hiatus from the NFL in 2022, this time the 45-year-old says he’s done “for good”.

The former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is thought to have had offers to play on into next season but has instead decided to conclude the most storybook career in the history of the sport.

For a man that rightly earned the moniker of the NFL’s GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) for his performances and winning record, it’s worth remembering how his journey through the NFL began in such an auspicious manner.
 

Where was Tom Brady drafted?

Brady’s arrival in the professional ranks didn’t create a whole lot of buzz, with a poor performance in the scouting combine dropping him down draft boards across the league.

An unflattering photo of him from his physical did him few favours either and the Michigan graduate would end up being selected in the sixth round of the 2000 draft at 199th overall.

Six quarterbacks went ahead of Brady in that year’s NFL draft and given the success he went on to achieve, the Pats are now widely credited with having made the best draft pick of all-time when selecting TB12 where they did.

Brady would start the 2000 season as New England’s fourth-string quarterback but would work his way up the depth chart to end that campaign as the back-up to Drew Bledsoe.

When Bledsoe went down with an injury in Week Two of the 2001 season, Brady got his chance and never looked back.
 

How many NFL Championships has Tom Brady won?

The Patriots would end the 2001 season winning their first-ever world title with the pin-point accurate and ultra-competitive Brady at quarterback. It would mark the start of a dynasty for New England, Brady and head coach Bill Belichick that would see them combine for six Lombardi Trophy’s in a 17-year spell.

Brady would add to the six rings he won in New England when he made the switch to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.

In his first season in Florida, Brady would prove all those who thought he couldn't win a title without coach Belichick wrong as the Buccaneers crushed the Kansas City Chiefs on home soil.

Brady’s seven NFL Championship wins is more than any player or franchise has managed in the history of the sport, with the Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers trailing behind with six titles, while only New England (11) have played in more big games than Brady (10).

Brady saved some of the best performances of his career for the NFL Championship game, memorably shredding Seattle’s famed ‘Legion of Boom’ defence and leading the largest comeback in NFL Championship history when the Pats defeated the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in 2017.

The California native’s ability to perform under pressure saw him named MVP five times in his career, putting him ahead of his childhood hero Joe Montana with three MVP gongs.

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Tom Brady’s career records

Brady’s defining legacy in the NFL is winning. The titles aside, he retires having gone 286-97 in his career with his record of 35 wins in 48 playoff starts particularly impressive. He’s also only the fourth quarterback to have beaten all 32 teams in the NFL.

His final season in the NFL with the Buccaneers was the first losing season of Brady’s career, and yet he still managed to break records, achieving an unprecedented 490 pass completions in the regular season.

That statistic joins a laundry list of records that Brady holds, the most notable of which are his status as the NFL’s all-time regular-season leader in pass attempts (12,050), completions (7,753), passing yards (89,214) and touchdown passes (649).

He also dominates the stats sheet when it comes to the playoffs, posting the most pass completions (1,200), playoff passing yards (13,400) and postseason passing touchdowns (88) in NFL history.

Brady’s consistency year after year is what saw him climb to the top of the majority of quarterback-related statistical ladders and it's remarkable his efforts didn’t earn him more than three NFL regular season MVP prizes.
 

What next for Tom Brady?

Having been the oldest player to be named league MVP and the oldest quarterback to win an NFL Championship, Brady can say he was a success at the very top right until the end.

He accomplished a personal goal of playing until he was 45 and although there was a few signs of decline in his final season with the Buccaneers, he still ranked in the top ten for the year when it came to passing yards (4694), pass completion percentage (66.8%) and passing touchdowns (25).

Brady proved he can still cut it at the very top last year and will no doubt find it tough to walk away, especially with offers to carry on at the table.

But ‘Tom Terrific’ appears to accept he has nothing left to prove in the sport and with a £300m contract to be the lead TV analyst for Fox Sports already inked, his move into retirement may just stick this time.