The biggest downside of Tom Brady's eventual retirement is that whenever it happens, we won't have Tom Brady's eventual retirement to talk about anymore. 

As you may or may not have noticed this offseason, speculation surrounding Brady's retirement has basically been non-stop over the past four months. Will he play past 2018? Will be play until he's 45? Will he even ever retire?

The only person who actually knows the answer to any of those questions is Brady. Although no one else really knows what the quarterback is going to do, there is one person out there who has a slightly more insight than the rest of us, and that person is Brady's good friend and former teammate, Willie McGinest. 

McGinest played with Brady for six seasons and as a current employee of the NFL Network, he's generally one of the few media members -- not named Oprah or Jim Gray -- who has the ability to score a one-on-one interview with Brady. 

Brady also credits McGinest with introducing him to TB12 trainer Alex Guerrero. 

So when does McGinest think Brady is going to retire?

The former Patriots linebacker thinks that Brady will call it quits this year if New England ends up winning the Super Bowl. McGinest shared his opinion during a recent appearance on the Dave Dameshek Football Program. 

"I think there will be a walk-off, if he wins this year, a Super Bowl," McGinest said. "I think this: it won't be 45 years old. I think he'll walk off and say, 'The game has been amazing to me and now I am going to figure something else out.'"

Although the thought of Brady retiring after the 2018 season might seem crazy, the Patriots quarterback has dropped plenty of hints to suggest that it's at least possible. First, let's start with the Oprah Winfrey interview that aired on Father's Day. 

During his chat with Oprah, Brady said that retirement was likely something that was going to happen "sooner, rather than later."

"I think about it more now than I used to," Brady told Winfrey, per the Boston Herald. "I think I'm seeing there's definitely an end coming sooner, rather than later."

Although Brady didn't give a definitive date, he did give one during an interview in his Facebook docu-series. In "Tom vs. Time," Brady said that he would retire if he made it two more Super Bowls. 

"Two more Super Bowls. Two more," Brady said. "That could be shorter than five or six [more years]."

The "Tom vs. Time" interview was conducted in late 2017, which means he's already checked one of those Super Bowls off his to-do list. If he were to get back to the big game in 2018 and stick to his word, that means we would see Brady retire after a potential Super Bowl this season, just as McGinest is predicting. 

In a separate interview this offseason that took place on May 1 at an event in Southern California, Brady said that he had talked Gisele into letting him play for two more seasons, which would indicated that retirement is coming after the 2019 season. 

Although Brady has spent some time this week writing Spanish comments on Instagram about playing until he's 45, his non-Instagram comments seem to suggest that he'll be retiring long before that.