‘Natural tension’ with Belichick led to his exit from Patriots

Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have both praised one another several times since the two architects of the Patriots’ two-decade dynasty parted ways in New England. 

But during the final years of their partnership together in Foxborough, Brady now acknowledges that his relationship with his longtime coach started to grow stale, eventually leading to the quarterback’s exit in free agency ahead of the 2020 season.

During the latest edition of his weekly newsletter, Brady noted that his eventual departure from the Patriots was a “creeping decision” that had been brewing for “2-3 years” before he eventually signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

“The reality was, after twenty years together, a natural tension had developed between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise,” Brady wrote. “It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.”

As evidenced by a three-year run in Tampa where he won a Super Bowl and threw for 108 touchdowns over 50 games, Brady still had plenty left in the tank at the tail end of his Hall-of-Fame career. 

But New England’s roster, hindered by several whiffs in the NFL Draft, did not have the personnel in place to maximize the final window of Brady’s career, prompting Brady to move on to the Bucs. 

“All I did over those few days in March was assess and reassess my priorities,” Brady said of his approach entering free agency. “I asked myself, as someone headed into their forties with school-age kids and twenty years worth of battle scars, what truly mattered to me now? What I ended up with was a list of about twenty things that I then ranked and graded on a weighted scale from 1 to 3. 

“The presence of skill players was a 3 in terms of importance, for example, and the Bucs graded out as a 3 because of guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. The same was true for the head coach. That was a 3 in importance, and Tampa scored a 3 with Bruce Arians. Game day weather was a 2, practice weather was a 3. Financial compensation was on the list, obviously, but it wasn’t first, it probably wasn’t even top 10, and it definitely didn’t rank as a 3 in importance.

“In the end, I chose Tampa, almost exactly five years ago now, because, in the aggregate, it graded out higher than New England along those twenty or so dimensions,” Brady added. “It’s not much more complicated than that.”

Even though New England’s eroding roster and tension with Belichick prompted Brady to continue his career elsewhere, both he and Belichick seem to have reconciled now that their respective tenures in the NFL have come to a close. 

“His determination and relentless pursuit of excellence was beyond anything I’ve seen from players at that position,” Belichick said of Brady during his Patriots’ Hall-of-Fame induction in June. “Thank you for all you’ve done for us. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. And thank you for the example and model you’ve been for all of us. You’re unbelievable. Congratulations.”

“To Coach Belichick … It wasn’t me. It wasn’t you. It was us,” Brady added in his own speech at the same event. “Let me make this crystal clear, there is no other coach in the entire world I would rather play for.”

 

Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.