FOXBOROUGH, Mass. —

NFL quarterback Tom Brady will become an NFL analyst when his playing career is over.

The seven-time Super Bowl champion has agreed to join FOX Sports as its lead analyst, the network announced Tuesday.

"Over the course of this long-term agreement, Tom will not only call our biggest NFL games with Kevin Burkhardt, but will also serve as an ambassador for us, particularly with respect to client and promotional initiatives," Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said. "We are delighted that Tom has committed to joining the Fox team and wish him all the best during this upcoming season."

Two months ago, in a shocking turn of events, Brady announced he is returning for his 23rd season less than two months after announcing his retirement from football.

Brady, 44, announced via social media that he will be looking to take care of "unfinished business" with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season.

"These past two months I've realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come. But it’s not now. I love my teammates, and I love my supportive family. They make it all possible. I’m coming back for my 23rd season in Tampa," Brady wrote.

The seven-time Super Bowl champion and five-time Super Bowl Most Valuable Player will be entering his third season with the Buccaneers after playing the first 20 years of his career with the Patriots, who drafted him with the 199th overall pick in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft.

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On Feb. 1, Brady announced on social media that he would no longer be making the "competitive commitment" needed to play at a high level in the National Football League.

Brady's emotional statement specifically mentioned family, the league, his fans, the Buccaneers and others who played a role in his historic career. Notably, coach Bill Belichick, the Kraft family and the words "Patriots" and "retirement" were not mentioned in the statement.

"I have the greatest respect for Tom personally and always will," Patriots owner Robert Kraft wrote in a statement. "His humility, coupled with his drive and ambition, truly made him special. I will always feel a close bond to him and will always consider him an extension of my immediate family."

Brady won his first championship over 20 years ago in just his second NFL season, as he led the Patriots to an upset over the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI on Feb. 3, 2002.

He then led New England to back-to-back titles during the 2003 and 2004 seasons. In the process, the Patriots set an NFL record by winning 21 straight games between Week 5 of the 2003 season and Week 8 of the 2004 campaign.

After a decade, Brady and the Patriots won three titles in a five-season span from 2014 to 2018. He led two incredible Super Bowl comebacks against the Seattle Seahawks (Feb. 1, 2015) and the Atlanta Falcons (Feb. 5, 2017), the latter of which marked the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.

Brady's final championship with the Patriots came against the Rams, who relocated to Los Angeles, in Super Bowl LIII on Feb. 3, 2019.

TB12 left New England in free agency after the 2019 season and joined the Buccaneers in March 2020. Former Patriots star tight end Rob Gronkowski teamed up with Brady in Tampa and they were both instrumental in leading the Bucs' 31-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs that season. Brady claimed his fifth Super Bowl MVP trophy in the process.

Brady's final season ended with a heartbreaking loss to the Rams in the divisional round of the playoffs last weekend.

Patriots fans did get a chance to show their appreciation to Brady this season when he and the Buccaneers visited New England in Week 4. Tampa Bay won 19-17 at Gillette Stadium.

In his illustrious career, Brady has earned three NFL regular-season MVP awards (2007, 2010, 2017) and earned his record 15th Pro Bowl selection this season. In 2021, he led the NFL with 43 touchdown passes and a career-high 5,316 passing yards.

Brady is the NFL's all-time leader in passing yards (84,250), passing touchdowns (624) and completions (7,263). He also holds multiple all-time playoff records, including 13,049 passing yards and 86 passing touchdowns in postseason play.

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Standing in the middle of a barren farm field in northern Maine, Greg Porter walks the rows of dirt here with brown paper bags in one hand and white wooden stakes wrapped around his other.

Meticulously, he paces across this farm field, opening each numbered bag as he goes, marking down its location on a spreadsheet so that come harvest time in the fall, he knows exactly what he’s looking at.

Porter is part farmer and part researcher. He studies agriculture at the University of Maine in Presque Isle, a small rural community home to about 8,000 people that once was one of the nation’s largest producers of potatoes. They still produce plenty of spuds here, but Greg Porter isn’t farming potatoes for the money. He’s farming them for the future.

“We’re planting 45,000 different individual varieties of potatoes in this field. 45,000!” he remarked as he pulled out another handful of brown bags from his old GMC pickup truck.

Each brown bag Porter opens is filled with about 50 tubers; they’re essentially tiny potatoes. He and his research team have spent two years raising them in a greenhouse, combining thousands of different variations of potato parents to make potato offspring. Essentially, they’re trying to create the most efficient, most delicious potato out there.

These days though, the work in these fields is taking on new importance. With farmers across the country increasingly facing tougher growing conditions because of climate change, the hope is that somewhere in this field they harvest a new kind of potato that’s more resistant to climate change. Some may be able to tolerate higher temperatures and others may be able to handle more moisture.

“We’re developing DNA-based tools to stack the deck in our favor as we select them,” Porter added.

Last year, the potatoes industry in the United States was worth about $4 billion. All the more reason people like Don Flannery with the Maine Potato Board are paying close attention to the work Greg Porter and his team are doing.

“Potatoes are a high-input crop. It takes a lot of money to raise an acre of potatoes,” Flannery said sitting in his office surrounded by various pieces of potato memorabilia.

Aside from more extreme droughts and rain events, many of the varieties of potatoes being cultivated here need less fertilizer. With inflation and rising fertilizer prices, reducing any kind of costs for farmers could mean the difference between losing money and breaking even.

“If you’re not looking ahead and being proactive you’re usually behind in being reactive. Those that are gonna be successful in our business are the ones looking ahead,” Flannery added.

Back in the field, Porter and his team have started sending their potatoes to farms across the country to see how they hold up to growing conditions in states like Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. The hope is to help potato farmers across this country produce the best tasting, most lucrative crops possible.

“The hope is we produce a few out of our 45,000 that have enough good characteristics that they’re worthy of commercial investment.”

JOHNSON, Vt. — It's hard for me to express the amount of admiration I have for Dawn and Greg Tatro.

After losing their daughter to an overdose, Dawn and Greg Tatro set out to not only help people in recovery but also change how it's done.

The organization, Jenna's Promise, is named in honor of their daughter.

"One just said to me again tonight, he goes, 'I used to come to Johnson (Vermont) for drugs.' Now, he goes, 'I come to Johnson for recovery.' He goes, 'It's pretty awesome," Dawn said.

The Tatros' dreams of expanding how they help people have expanded over the course of a year. They now have a café that employs their residents and a health center.

"Once you get that veil of addiction off their, off their, face and you see the real person come out, it's incredible," said Greg.

The best part they say is how the town has embraced its residents. By going to the cafe, the people are actively participating in their recovery. It's a true, "It takes a village" mentality, playing out in real-time.

"It's cleaning the town up," said Dawn. "It's helping people and, uh, and it's creating this community."

Will Eberle is the executive director of the Vermont Association of Mental Health and Recovery.

"Unfortunately, we're still tracking at a very high rate of overdose deaths in Vermont. Currently, we have, according to our latest statistics, 151 overdose fatalities in Vermont through August of this year, and around 80% of those have included fentanyl," Eberle said.

There's no national data out yet for 2022, but with the prevalence of fentanyl across the nation, experts like Eberle are expecting it to be another year of tragically high numbers nationwide.

However, just like Dawn and Greg have seen, Will says the good news is that he's seeing less stigma as communities step up.

"Over time, it's starting to become sort of the community's business to work on these things more than the recovery sectors business, which is very heartening to see," he said.

The Tatros and Eberle believe the only way to completely flip the script on addiction and overdose deaths is for everyone to realize they have a role and to invest in the people and the places impacted.

They're hoping next year, even more communities see the value in the people working to make their lives better.

"It seems so simple, but to believe in someone, it's sometimes really what they need," said Dawn.

SCARBOROUGH, Maine — A rare football card featuring Tom Brady just sold for $118,000 at an auction in Maine.

The 2002 Topps Finest X-Fractor card features Brady the year he won his first Super Bowl. It was just one of 20 cards featuring Brady after his first Super Bowl win on February 3, 2002.

Brady was a starter with the New England Patriots at the time. The winner of the card was not named. The live auction wrapped up Monday, before Brady officially announced his retirement Tuesday.

Brady has said in his podcast, “Let’s Go”, his favorite Super Bowl was when his team beat the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX.

Collectible cards for Brady are going up in value right now.

A pair of signed rookie football cards sold for $2.25 million and $3.1 million in 2021.

One raccoon is bringing a whole new meaning to the "trash panda" moniker for his species.Multiple people spotted a raccoon clinging to the back of a garbage truck as it traveled down Interstate 93 in New Hampshire on Friday.A woman who shared a photo of the joyriding raccoon on social media said she rolled down her window to alert the driver of the garbage truck, and the driver said he knew about the animal and that it had been there since 3 a.m.

MOULTONBOROUGH, N.H. — Even with bare branches still anticipating winter snow, the landscape of New Hampshire’s lake region holds an estimable, eerie beauty.

Along with foliage, this time of year also sees an absence of one of New England's beloved waterfowl that is a haunting fixture along lakeshores.

This time of year, common loons leave their lake homes before they freeze to bob and fish in the warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean. While they may be at their most elusive in the winter, there’s a group trying to prevent the beloved bird from disappearing altogether at the hands of an invisible enemy.

"These contaminants are ubiquitous and they're persistent and it makes one shudder to think what might all be out there that just hasn't been identified," said Tiffany Grade, a biologist at the Loon Preservation Committee.

Grade has been tracking a disturbing decline in the birds' population since the mid-2000s. Ever since, they’ve been testing no longer viable eggs in look nests on local lakes and what her team has discovered is a disastrous chemical cocktail lurking in the egg, including banned chemicals DDT and PCB.

"Here we are decades after the fact, and these are still showing up in these sediments. They're flushing into the lake and we're seeing them potentially impacting our loon population," said Grade.

DDT was a pesticide used heavily in the 1940s and 1950s in orchards. PCB was used in everything from electrical equipment to fluids for vehicles to sprays to keep the dust down in the summer on country roads. Both have been banned since the 1970s.

It’s not just the loon population in New Hampshire that these “legacy chemicals” have been found in, but in wildlife around the country and world – such as marine life up and down the east coast as well as waterfowl on the Great Lakes.

While the full extent of how these chemicals are impacting animals is still being studied, it’s been found that they can stunt growth, weaken eggshells, reduce reproduction and compromise immune function.

"This is not just the New Hampshire issue. This is a, this is a issue across the country," said Grade. "We just need more information to help us understand. You know where these areas of contaminants are both for the sake of protecting loons, other wildlife, but people as well."

The Loon Preservation Committee may be a small nonprofit, but they’re the one agency in the state who’s systematically testing species high up on the food chain measuring the impacts of these banned chemicals, which is an expensive endeavor. Grade hopes other organizations jump on board to figure out this issue not only for the sake of wildlife but for our sake, too.

"We need to make sure we understand. What the impacts potential impacts of these contaminants can be and that that's an open and transparent process," Grade said.

While this team works to figure out how to save these beautiful creatures, they also have a plea about watching what we release into our revered landscapes, because we may never be able to take it out.

"We know we can't plead ignorance anymore about what these chemicals can do, and we really need to be careful about it," said Grade.

WINTHROP, Maine — Spend a little time on Craig Hickman’s farm in central Maine and it’s clear he has a passion for growing his own food, something that for him that started early.

"My dad who was a Tuskegee airman on the ground, who probably would have been a farmer in another life, decided to turn our backyard in the inner city, the segregated inner city of Milwaukee into food," said Hickman, who is a Maine state senator.

"If you were dirt poor, but you could grow your food for yourself, then nobody could push you around and tell you what," he said.

Growing up how he did, his farm is not just a means for food, it’s his equal parts church and political ideology

"I feel like food is a ministry. Feeding oneself is a spiritual activity. It's a political activity. It's resistance, it's power," said Hickman.

It’s his strong, almost poetic views of food that are the fuel behind the state of Maine’s newest addition to its constitution: the right to food.

"If you have a right to life and liberty, if you have a right to obtain safety and happiness, which our Constitution says, then how can you not have a right to food?" he asked.

With 61% of the vote, Mainers passed the first in the nation right to food, which states that the people of Maine have the right to save and exchange seeds and the right to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing for their own nourishment.

"More and more, we see if we don't write our rights down and explicitly protect them in constitutions, they can be infringed upon it anytime," said Hickman.

When you first hear of the concept it may sound like a no-brainer. However, according to research done by the University of Southern Maine, the state imports about 90% of the food Mainers consume, making it the state most dependent on outside sourcing of food.

With the pandemic tying up supply chains and stores baring empty shelves when demand shifted, Hickman sees the new amendment as giving people the power to opt-out of the commercial food chain.

"We take our food system for granted. We take our food supply for granted, but the pandemic proved to us we can't do that."

There is some opposition to the idea, including The Humane Society, which has expressed concerns about the legislation opening the door to animal welfare abuses. Hickman believes the existing language prevents that.

"We regulate, how you treat your cats and dogs, where we regulate humane and inhumane slaughter. Those things will not go away because of rights to food. There's language in the amendment that explicitly doesn't allow for the abuse of anything in the production of food, which would include animals," he explained.

The idea is picking up in other states with Washington and West Virginia working on right to food amendments of their own.

While the idea may catch on in other parts of the country, Hickman hopes more of his neighbors take steps to reclaim their power through food.

"Structures change. They don't change overnight. We have definitely thought put a different foundation under our food system. So, now, we'll see what we can build from it," he said.

CONWAY, N.H. — Mother Nature is rarely kind to Mt. Washington. On a recent fall morning, the New Hampshire's tallest peak was bathed in blue skies as tourists from all over the world flocked here to catch one final glimpse of foliage.

This mountain is home to the highest recorded man-measured wind speed in the world and it is also home to the world’s first mountain-climbing train, The Cog Railway.

The operation is about as small-business as they come. Each diesel-powered engine is custom built in a warehouse at the base of Mt. Washington. Like many businesses across the country though, The Cog is being faced with a shortage of mechanics and engineers needed to keep this place going.

"New Hampshire has had a hard time with keeping skilled workers. They always tend to leave out of state," said Rob Arey, who works for the railway.

But the old Cog Railway first constructed in 1868 is about to offer new opportunities to a whole new generation of the workforce.

The idea is simple, connect students at nearby White Mountains Community College with job training opportunities working on those diesel engines which power The Cog Railway. Not only will the program help get graduating students into a job pipeline that desperately needs them, the concept is also being deployed in hopes of keeping students from leaving rural communities like this one once they graduate.

A term typically referred to as “rural flight.”

"This is the first step in us keeping our kids here in the local schools, learning here, falling in love with us as a place to work," Rob Arey added.

Marc Poulit is an instructor at nearby White Mountains Community College. He has about 30 students in his program, all of whom are now eligible to apply for the new internship program.

"We are really planting that seed and thinking about, 'I don’t need to move out of state to get a good-paying job,'" Poulit said.

Perhaps the biggest challenge when it comes to keeping students in rural communities after they graduate is pay. On average, new graduates can earn 15% more on their first job if they move to a big city. That is often a gamechanger for new graduates especially if they have student loans to pay off.

Back at the Cog, they are anxiously awaiting the arrival of new students. While this railway may be old the technology, what they’re using here is more complex than most Amtrak trains, providing a perfect opportunity for the next generation of engineers and mechanics to train on.

"The way this facility was built is for the future. It’s all technology they may not even get at the community college. It’s exciting they get to come in here and learn it first hand," said Rob Arey with The Cog.

Like the trains here themselves, the hope is the whole idea will keep students careers climbing in the communities they call home.

Parts of the Northeast could begin to experience impacts from Tropical Storm Henri as soon as late Saturday, as the system that is expected to become a hurricane by the end of the day barrels toward the region.

Storm surge and the tide could cause high water in coastal New England as Henri moves inland, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. Heavy rain and wind may also produce flooding.

Henri was centered Saturday morning about 195 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and about 555 miles south of Montauk Point, New York. It was a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds at 70 mph, and was moving north-northeast at 12 mph.

Forecasters said Henri was expected to become a hurricane Saturday. It was expected to be at or near hurricane strength when it made landfall, which the hurricane center said could be in New York's Long Island or southern New England.

If it made a direct hit on New England, it would be the first hurricane to do so in the region since Hurricane Bob in 1991, a Category 2 storm that killed at least 17 people.

The hurricane center storm surge between 3 and 5 feet was possible with Henri from Flushing, New York, to Chatham, Massachusetts; and for parts of the North Shore and South Shore of Long Island.

Rainfall between 3 to 6 inches was expected Sunday through Monday over the Northeast.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday urged people vacationing on the Cape to leave well before Henri hits, and those who planned to start vacations there to delay their plans. “We don't want people to be stuck in traffic on the Cape Cod bridges when the storm is in full force on Sunday,” he said.

Baker said up to 1,000 National Guard troops were on standby to help with evacuations if needed.

“This storm is extremely worrisome,” said Michael Finkelstein, police chief and emergency management director in East Lyme, Connecticut. “We haven’t been down this road in quite a while and there’s no doubt that we and the rest of New England would have some real difficulties with a direct hit from a hurricane.”

Finkelstein said he’s most concerned about low-lying areas of town that could become impossible to access because of flooding and a storm surge.

Large swaths of the Eastern seaboard were mopping up on Friday from the effects of Henri's predecessor, Tropical Depression Fred. In North Carolina, Haywood County Sheriff Greg Christopher said four people died and five individuals remained unaccounted for, down from around 20 people reported missing on Thursday.

The weather service warned of the potential for damaging winds and widespread coastal flooding from Henri, and officials in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York cautioned that people could lose power for a week or even longer. Authorities urged people to secure their boats, fuel up their vehicles and stock up on canned goods.

Video below: Mariners secure boats on Cape Cod ahead of Henri

At Safe Harbor Marina in coastal Plymouth, Massachusetts, Steve Berlo was among the many boaters having their vessels pulled out of the water ahead of the storm.

“It’s rare, but when it happens, you want to be sure you’re ready,” said Berlo, 54. “Got to protect our second home. So that’s that. Now I can sleep tonight.”

In the Hamptons, the celebrity playground on Long Island’s east end, officials warned of dangerous rip currents and flooding that’s likely to turn streets, like mansion-lined Dune Road on the Atlantic coast, into lagoons.

Ryan Murphy, the emergency management administrator for the Town of Southampton, said that while the storm’s track continues to evolve, “we have to plan as if it’s going to be like a Category 1 hurricane that would be hitting us.”

The National Weather Service also warned residents and beachgoers on the North Carolina coast of rip currents and rough surf associated with Henri. Meteorologist Steven Pfaff of the weather service’s Wilmington office said swells from Henri were expected to create hazardous surf conditions beginning Friday and continuing on Saturday.

At the U.S. Navy’s submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, personnel on Friday were securing submarine moorings, installing flood gates in front of doors on some waterfront buildings, and doubling up lines on small boats, officials said. Families were being encouraged to watch the forecast and make any necessary preparations.

The Coast Guard urged boaters to stay off the water, saying in a statement: “The Coast Guard’s search and rescue capabilities degrade as storm conditions strengthen. This means help could be delayed.”

At the Port Niantic marina in Niantic, Connecticut, Debbie Shelburn and her employees were already busy Friday hauling boats out of the water and into a large storage building.

“Basically, it’s become all hands on deck. No matter your position — mechanic, whatever — everybody is out there helping with the logistics of moving the boats and getting them secure on land,” she said.

Video below: New Hampshire emergency management, U.S. Coast Guard monitoring storm