The 49ers were ready to coax Tom Brady out of retirement and no one knew about it

After a tough NFC title game loss last season, the San Francisco 49ers were confident they could reach their Super Bowl aspirations with an uneven Brock Purdy. But that doesn’t mean they stopped looking at potentially greener pastures.

In a recent report from ESPN’s Nick Wagoner, the 49ers were apparently ready to coax Tom Brady out of another retirement so he could help San Francisco to a Lombardi Trophy. You are not reading that wrong. That is not a typo, and the story itself with this report is nearly a week old at the time of this writing.

HOW was this not bigger news?

More from ESPN:

“Early in the offseason, Niners coach Kyle Shanahan sat down with Purdy and assured him that if he was healthy he would be the starter unless [Tom] Brady wanted to play one more season for his hometown Niners.

An ecstatic Purdy understood the logic, but the competitor in him also bubbled under the surface.”

OK, the language of that writing (especially “early in the offseason”) suggests that this Brady revelation is, in itself, nearly a year old. Given that Brady is the greatest football player in history to many, I’m shocked it took this long for everyone to connect the dots to a seemingly zany plan the 49ers were actually considering. There’s no word on how seriously Brady considered unretiring (again). That said, I still can’t believe it took until the week of NFL championship Sunday for us to learn this was ever a possibility.

San Francisco is once again a win away from the Super Bowl. So I suppose it all worked out with Purdy. But holy cow, could you imagine if they had done it with Brady instead? The NFL world would’ve melted at a second un-retirement before it even got to that point.