Buccaneers teammate makes Tom Brady prediction for 2023 NFL season

Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Kyle Rudolph spent just one season playing alongside Tom Brady but nevertheless has predicted what the quarterback will do regarding his future. 

“I’d have to say he keeps playing,” Rudolph remarked about Brady during an appearance on the NFL Network “Good Morning Football” program, per the Joe Bucs Fan website. “Just being around [Brady] every day seeing him out at practice. Physically, there is no one who does it as well as he does. It’s incredible.” 

Interestingly, recently retired Buccaneers quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen offered a similar take while speaking with Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times.

“There’s not one practice I watched that I didn’t go tell somebody, ‘How does a guy that age throw a football like that at 45?'” Christensen told Stroud about Brady. “It’s a Picasso.” 

Both Christensen and ESPN’s Jeff Darlington have suggested that Brady was never physically himself from summer workouts through the 31-14 wild-card playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Jan. 16 because of his “heartbreaking” divorce. 

Darlington said that Brady dealt with “15 pounds of weight loss,” and a previous report claimed the 45-year-old “lost 27 pounds at one point prior to the season.” 

Former Pro Bowl cornerback Richard Sherman, Brady’s former teammate with Tampa Bay, explained during a podcast episode that Brady “was just off” during the postseason loss to Dallas and was experiencing “a fall from grace” that comes with age. 

Numbers shared by ESPN show that the seven-time Super Bowl champion was all over the map while featuring for a Buccaneers team that went 8-9 but still claimed the NFC South title. 

TB12 set new single-season records of 490 completions and 733 pass attempts, and he ended the regular season third with 4,694 passing yards and tied for eighth with 25 touchdowns through the air. He was also tied for 31st out of 34 eligible players with 6.4 yards per pass attempt and ranked 18th out of 31 eligible signal-callers with a 52.5 total QBR. 

It sounds more and more like people close to Brady think he’ll keep playing and could possibly stay with the Buccaneers to “be part of the solution” for the Super Bowl LV champions. Whether or not Brady wants to endure another grueling season at his age remains the great unknown heading into the conference championship Sunday. 

As for Rudolph, Stroud noted in a different piece that the 33-year-old has likely played his final down with the Bucs.