In September 2014, during his weekly interview on WEEI a few days before the season opener, Tom Brady was asked a pertinent question:
How much longer did he intend to play?
Brady was 37 years old, and about to enter his 15th NFL season. He was still playing exceptionally well — in 2013, he threw for 4,343 yards and finished second to Denver’s Peyton Manning in the Most Valuable Player balloting.
But there were percolating frustrations. His contract was up at season’s end. Bill Belichick had drafted Brady’s presumed successor, Eastern Illinois’s Jimmy Garoppolo, in the second round that April.