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Tom Brady Is Quiet Quitting

3:02 PM EDT on September 18, 2022

Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images

After 21 years in the NFL, Tom Brady has finally learned what I learned in three days at my first job: Work sucks.

Sure, Tom Brady is an NFL quarterback, which you could be mistaken for believing is a cool job. But jobs are jobs, baby! You think eating a bunch of tape is a fun and delicious experience? It's not! The tape is so crunchy. It's hard to chew! Why be a great NFL quarterback, which he's already been for many, many seasons, when you could be less good and still get paid the same?

Nah. This guy is quiet quitting!

"Quiet quitting" is allegedly when you do only the basic requirements of your job instead of working really hard to make your boss extra money. It's a fake trend with an alliterative name invented to describe the extremely slight downtick in American worker productivity. Except in Tom Brady's case. In Tom Brady's case, quiet quitting is real and he is doing it.

We should have seen the signs earlier. There's no greater sign that you're planning on taking all your work Zooms from a yacht than moving to Tampa. Then this guy literally retired before realizing that he had made a terrible mistake: He could simply continue being paid for doing way less! Now he's taking a whole day off every week instead of going to practice just because he can. Iconique!

Reports earlier this month implied that Brady's 11-day break during training camp was due to some marital issues. You absolute baby. You naive little waif. You believed that? Open your narrow mind, breathe in the possibilities of the galaxy, and realize that Tom Brady might have just taken 11 paid days off, sat on his couch, and watched the entire Outlander series on repeat with Gisele all snuggled up. Injuries can be tested for by a doctor. You know what can't be tested for? Marital issues. Your wife will lie for you. Your wife wants to lie for you so that you can make millions of dollars and also hang out with her.

But Kelsey, you might be saying, isn't "quiet quitting" just doing the bare minimum required of you to continue to be paid? Tom Brady is a good quarterback.

To which I say, not today! In the first half of the Buccaneers' game against the Saints, Brady threw for 104 yards. They've only been to the red zone once.

Sure, he seems mad. There have been clips of him yelling at the sideline and chucking tablets at the ground.

What a good actor. A future Hall-of-Fame passer could absolutely throw a tablet harder than that. Plus, the tablet is in a little childproof sleeve. If it breaks, he can expense it anyway!

Good for Tommy Brady. He deserves a little break.

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