It turns out that a fan will not wind up having to spend over half a million dollars on a football that turned out to not be from Tom Brady’s final NFL touchdown pass.
On Friday, ESPN reported that the sale of what had originally been viewed as the ball from Brady’s final TD pass has been “voided by mutual agreement between buyer, consigner and auction house, according to Lelands Auctions on Thursday.”
The ball from Brady’s touchdown pass to Mike Evans in the Divisional Round Playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams originally sold for $518,000 through Lelands Auctions. However, less than 24 hours after the sale was agreed to, Brady famously came out of retirement to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers again in 2022, thus nullifying the historical significance of the ball on auction.
According to ESPN, the money from the sale never exchanged hands and the agreement to make the sale was simply canceled. Mike Heffner, president and partner at Lelands, told ESPN that they “wanted to do the right thing here” in regards to the unusual situation.
In fact, ESPN reports that the main reason that it took a month to void the sale was to see whether Brady would in fact stay unretired.
“All parties were waiting to see how it played out,” Heffner said. “Tom Brady, let’s face it, is kind of unpredictable these days. Until he throws that first touchdown pass in September, this ball is still the record.”
As it stands, the seller from the auction still reportedly plans to sell the ball, but is likely to fetch a lower return than the original $518,000.
As for Brady, he came out of his 40-day retirement to return to the Buccaneers for another season, amid rumors that he was engineering a jump to the Miami Dolphins that blew up after Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the team. Brady now heads into the 2022 season, at which point he’ll be 45 years old, with a new head coach in the form of Todd Bowles, following the retirement of Bruce Arians.