Tom Brady makes rare comment about ‘challenging’ divorce from Gisele Bündchen

Tom Brady spoke out about how his divorce from Gisele Bündchen made the final year of his NFL career rough.

Talking to MLFootball, who posted the interview on X Thursday, Brady, 48, detailed the impact of splitting with Bündchen, 45, with whom he finalized a divorce in October 2022 after 13 years of marriage.

“My last season was tough,” he admitted. “I was going through, I had a lot of, you know, a personal family issue. And it was a challenge and it was very … it just took a lot out of me in terms of, you know, my ability to play.”

Brady, who retired from football for the first time in February of 2022, returned to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers briefly, and then permanently left the NFL in 2023, noted that he’d always had family in mind when choosing to step away.

“I had 23 years of [football] so I didn’t think I was missing anything, retiring,” he explained. “I felt like I always had a goal — 45. I was 45 years old, I wanted to spend time with my kids, I felt like, okay, now it’s time for me to be at all my kids’ games. They’ve been to enough of their dad’s games.”

“I tried to put as much as I could into it,” he noted of his last season. “I felt like I owed to my teammates and coaches to give them everything I had. I wish it could have been a little bit better at the end. But it was just a unique situation and a unique year for me.”

He and the retired Victoria’s Secret Angel share two kids: Benjamin, 16, and Vivian, 13. Brady also shares son Jack, 18, with ex-partner Bridget Moynahan.

Bünchden went on marry jiu jitsu instructor Joaquim Valente in December after welcoming their first child together in early 2025.

Brady has most recently been linked to Alix Earle, with the two spotted getting cozy on New Year’s Eve.

Page Six exclusively revealed that Earle, 25, and Brady, 48, spent some time together at a NYE yacht party, with an insider telling us the two eventually left a “larger group” and went to a private cabin to talk.

Prior to that, Brady was romantically linked to model Irina Shayk following his divorce.