Tom Brady's documentary director doesn't think Brady will play much longer

Like everyone else, Gotham Chopra wonders how much longer Tom Brady can play. The difference with Chopra is he had access to Brady that few others get.

Chopra was the director of Brady’s “Tom vs. Time” documentary on Facebook. He spent most of the last year with Brady. And while Brady, coming off an NFL MVP, doesn’t look like a player who’s close to retirement, Chopra doesn’t buy the notion Brady will still be playing by his mid-40s.

“This idea that he’s going to play for four or five more seasons … I mean, this is just me, the guy who’s been around him for a while now. I just have a hard time envisioning that, to be candid,” Chopra told “The MMQB Podcast with Peter King,” via the New York Post. “But we’ll see. I do think that these next few weeks and months are a critical time for him.”

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Brady has expressed the desire to play until his mid-40s, though that would far surpass what every other quarterback has ever done. However, no other quarterback had ever won an MVP at age 40 either, as Brady did last season. If anyone can do it, it’s Brady.

Brady’s ability to continue at a high level isn’t the only issue. There’s also the fact that Brady and his wife, Gisele Bündchen, have young children. Chopra — who, again, got access to Brady and his family that few others have had — said Brady will think about his family when he ponders how long to play.

“He’s got three growing kids, a wife who’s like, ‘You know, I’ve kind of been putting stuff on hold for a while, and I wanna go out and do my thing now too,’” Chopra said. “And so Tom’s juggling a lot of things, and I think that’s basically what he says at the end: I gotta recalibrate. I have to find that conviction again.”

Until Brady decides to retire, everyone will speculate on how long he’ll play. That’s part of being a great player who is on the back nine of his career. Chopra doesn’t seem to know the answer, but he does have more insight that most of the rest of us.

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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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