It’s been five years since Tom Brady left the Patriots to sign with the Bucs, and the legendary quarterback has acknowledged that ‘tension’ between him and coach Bill Belichick led to his departure.
The pair spent 20 seasons together and won six Super Bowls in New England, where Belichick established a strict culture known as ‘The Patriot Way.’
But Brady eventually grew ready for a new challenge, as he signed with the Bucs in 2020 and spent the last three years of his career there – winning a Super Bowl with a much more player-friendly coach in Bruce Arians.
‘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 in his newsletter.
‘It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.’
Brady noted that entering free agency had been a ‘creeping decision that lived passively in the back of mind’ for two or three years before his eventual move to Tampa Bay.
Tom Brady has acknowledged that there was ‘tension’ between him and Bill Belichick towards the end of his tenure in New England
Bill Belichick joined UNC as head coach after 24 seasons leading the New England Patriots
‘Until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later,’ he said.
Brady’s comments are a rather stark departure from his comments on the Pat McAfee Show last year, when he suggested the rumors of a rift between him and Belichick were largely overblown.
‘My respect for Coach Belichick is pretty well documented,’ he said in January 2024. ‘He was an incredible leader and coach for our team. And I tried to do my best every single day that I took the field; I knew that he did the same thing.
‘And I think that’s why I respected his coaching so much. Toward the later part of my career, I really think there was so much people trying to create some division that some of it – most of it – was untrue. But it’s just the way the world works.’
An NFL investigation that concluded in 2022 found that the Dolphins tried to recruit Brady to Miami in 2019 (and later 2021), using ‘impermissible communication.’
The quarterback never did make it to South Beach but went to Tampa Bay and won LV with the team in 2021.
Before moving to Tampa Bay, Brady assessed his priorities as ‘someone headed into their forties with school-age kids and twenty years worth of battle scars,’ he said now, mentioning the presence of skill position players, weather and other factors.
Brady gets a hug from head coach Belichick after Super Bowl win over the Seahawks
The quarterback won the final Super Bowl of his career in 2021 with the Buccaneers
‘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. It’s not much more complicated than that,’ he said.
Brady previously hinted in the Apple docuseries The Dynasty how he and Belichick’s relationship had deteriorated.
‘Me and coach Belichick, we did what we loved and competed for 20 years together,’ Brady said in the docuseries, as quoted by The Athletic. ‘But I wasn’t going to sign another contract [in New England] even if I wanted to play until [I was] 50. Based on how things had gone, I wasn’t going to sign up for more of it.’
Notably, Belichick was invited to Brady’s Netflix roast last year, and NFL Network reported that Brady reached out to his former coach to gauge his interest in the Raiders’ previous head coaching vacancy (Brady is a minority owner in Las Vegas).
Belichick ultimately rebuffed the reported approaches from Las Vegas and other teams, as he had only recently before agreed to become the head coach of the University of North Carolina.
