FOXBORO -- Cross another one off the list.

Monday’s retirement of Matt Light leaves quarterback Tom Brady (running back Kevin Faulk is currently a free agent) as the only remaining holdover from the Super Bowl XXXVI team -- the only guy left on the roster who can speak authoritatively on the cold showers and metal lockers at old Foxboro Stadium.

And while Light doesn’t have the star power of Brady or the locker-room duende of Faulk -- people spent more time talking about his affinity for practical jokes than his ability as an offensive lineman on Monday -- he deserves the respect that you’d give someone who helped build something from the ground up.

After all, as New England owner Robert Kraft noted Monday, Light retires as one of five players in NFL history to have started in five Super Bowls (a group that includes Brady, John Elway, Cornelius Bennett and Charles Haley). Rare air, indeed.

“There are few things that have brought me more joy over my career than to be a part of the rebuilding of the Patriots organization,” said Light, who officially announced his retirement on Monday after 11 seasons in the NFL.

And despite the promise of a year’s supply of Kit Kats from Brady and the proclamation from offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia that Light was still in the prime of his career, the occasionally goofy left tackle out of Purdue couldn’t be coaxed back for a 12th season.

“When it’s your time, you just know,” Light said.

A father of three, Light said that it wasn’t only a desire “to leave this game upright and feeling good,” but to be able to spend more time with his family.

“I’ve got a daughter that’s 10, and I’ve got two boys who are knuckleheads, and they need a lot of guidance, and they need a lot more time,” Light said.

“I think that one of things that was ever apparent over the last couple seasons, it takes a lot longer to recover the older you get,” he added.  “Really, during that six, seven, eight months of the football season, it really becomes very difficult to give much outside of a ‘hi’ or ‘goodnight’ or ‘good morning.’ That’s always been really important.”

His teammates were effusive in their praise of Light, with Brady calling him “an exceptional player and an exceptional person and teammate” in a video tribute to Light.

“He played on out left side for 11 great seasons, in the biggest games on the biggest stages. He’s a really unique player and a unique person. He really allowed offensively to be very versatile in the things we did because of his versatility,” Brady said.

“He’s one of my favorite teammates I’ve ever had. I’m certainly going to miss him and I’m still going to try to talk him out of retirement because I still want him back here for a few more years.”

As Scarnecchia hinted, Light is coming off one of the best seasons of his career. He started 15 of the 16 regular-season games, and according to Pro Football Focus, the veteran left tackle (who played 1,260 snaps, second-most among all of New England’s offensive linemen) was the second-best lineman when it came to pass blocking and screen blocking.

But some of that may be due in part -- at least over the second half of the season -- to the fact that Light knew he was going to retire at the end of the year.

“This past season, there was a different mindset -- maybe that’s why I enjoyed some success out there,” Light shrugged. “I really just felt like I’m just blessed to be a part of this. That made that season so memorable and so much fun and knowing that for me, when I finally close a chapter, I don’t look back.”

“We’re pretty close, so I’ve know for a while,” said Logan Mankins, who lined up at left guard next to Light for the better part of the last seven seasons. “I don’t want to get into dates and everything. But most of us knew it was coming.

“We had some late nights after games here celebrating and we had heart-to-heart talks about stuff like that. I think he was sharing it and bouncing it off people. We always told him that whatever he felt was right, we’d support him.”

Light closed out his speech with a quote from Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The phrase certainly bears a striking similarity to the mantra preached constantly by Patriots coach Bill Belichick: Do your job.

“We hear it 5,000 times a week. ‘Just worry about yourself.’ ‘Don’t try to do somebody else’s work.’ ‘Make it part of your routine.’ ‘Keep striving to do it better and better,’” Light recalled.

“So I think that the excellence that we all shared as an organization, teammates, friends and everything else, it’s not just an act. It’s a habit. It’s how we try to live our lives. It’s what we try to do day in and day out and I hope that habit continues.”