With a successful winery and a private equity group that invests in clean energy projects, not to mention a flag football team that he coaches, Drew Bledsoe made the transition into life after football rather seamlessly. He said it was easier for him because he planned for it. Still, letting go is tough, so Bledsoe, now 39, has some empathy for 41-year-old Brett Favre hanging around all of these years. ”It’s not an easy thing, and the reasons are all pretty obvious, but you go from that lifestyle of being an NFL football player, where you’ve got the adrenaline rush of Sundays. You’ve got the structure around you: where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there, what you’re supposed to do. You’ve got all that goes with that. And then when you step away from that, it’s not like one part of that goes away; it all goes away,” Bledsoe said during a conference call Friday to discuss being one of three finalists for entry into the Patriots Hall of Fame.

”You’ve got to find things to fill those voids. The advantage that I had is that I recognized probably eight or nine years into my career that it wasn’t going to last forever. So we started planning for it. I bought some vineyard lands and started that project. I laid the foundations for this capital group, this private equity group that we have, so that when I stepped away I wasn’t stepping into the void. I was moving into these other things that were exciting and engaging.”


So Bledsoe, who was asked specifically about Favre, remains busy juggling activities with his work ventures and his kids. He was actually a few minutes late to the conference call because he had just gotten off the ski slopes.

”I honestly haven’t had a day since I retired where I’ve gotten out of bed trying to figure out what I was going to do that day,” Bledsoe said. ”I’ve just been engaged the entire time. So from that standpoint, I think Brett (Favre) just needs a hobby. He needs to find something else he wants to do.”

While he doesn’t watch games every Sunday, Bledsoe still gets that rush when the game starts and he sees the opening kickoff.

”I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that when I turn on a game and watch the opening kickoff my body still reacts to that,” Bledsoe said. ”My hair stands up and the adrenaline starts flowing a little bit. That will always be there. I will always have that desire and that piece of me that wants to get back out there and do it again, but I think that’s pretty consistent for everybody at whatever level you played. But now I find my competition and my engagement in other arenas and I’m fighting hard to be successful in new endeavors and because of that I really don’t have that void that I think gets guys in trouble sometimes.”f80f6c11dcf545c23e8a15ff0f0418d3.js" "">