Tom Brady is back, and while that news has been the cause of some confusion and dismay for opposing fans and teams, it’s also given NFL Twitter some solid comedic content.
And sure, while this era of corporate Twitter accounts being “relatable” or whatever is just a transparent marketing ploy directed at the meme sensibilities of the social media generation, official team accounts can still be genuinely really funny at times. Brady coming out of retirement after six weeks at home was one of those times.
NFL teams were getting their jokes off when Brady initially announced his retirement after Adam Schefter leaked the news in early February, and their PR departments are now hard at work circling back to those. The best QB to ever do it leaving the league and evening out the playing field was cause for celebration for pretty much every other team in the league, but they’ll have to pick another time to celebrate because Brady wanted to do a victory lap.
The Indianapolis Colts may have jinxed themselves, as they posted a clip of a SpongeBob episode whose ending — which they posted this weekend after Brady’s reverse-reverse — mirrors the real-life sequence of events.
The New York Jets’ account had simply tweeted, “this better be real” on February 1. We all thought it was! The obituaries were written, the tributes made, the Instagram stories posted. But a simple “guess not” from this weekend pretty much sums it up.
The Carolina Panthers also found relatability in a SpongeBob gif — that eye-twitch may feel all too familiar for the NFC South teams and fans after Brady’s comeback decision.
The Los Angeles Chargers had tweeted a picture of a man in a coat and sunglasses without context when TB12 announced his retirement. To the Internet-illiterate, it may not have made much sense, but others were quick to include the original meme in the replies, in which the man is stopping by a hater’s funeral to make sure he is dead.
I’m not sure how the funeral from the original photo went, but Brady is up and out of the coffin, to the dismay of the Chargers, who I suppose didn’t check thoroughly enough.
This retirement reversal is going to give us content for years to come. It’ll be a fun day on Twitter the next time Brady says he’s retiring.