Tom Brady and Bill Belichick achieved remarkable success in the NFL, attaining feats that other quarterback and coach duos can only dream about. However, as Brady highlighted in his recent newsletter, their relationship was not always seamless—leading to a “natural tension” that ultimately necessitated a separation.
Over the years, Brady has consistently praised his former coach. Most recently, during The Herd with Colin Cowherd in January, he remarked on their “great relationship,” despite the typical differences that arise from spending two decades together.
This past Monday, Brady elaborated on some of those differences in his weekly newsletter. While discussing NFL free agency, he noted that a “natural tension” had developed in New England, influencing his decision to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020. “I was only involved in free agency once, at the tail end of my career, when free agency means something very different than it does for a backup coming off a disappointing season or a young player concluding their rookie deal,” Brady wrote. He explained, “For me, it was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of my mind for 2-3 years until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later.”
Brady continued, “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. It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.” While it’s understandable that two strong personalities like Brady and Belichick wore on each other by the end of their time in New England, it’s notable that these sentiments significantly influenced Brady’s choice to leave.
Brady emphasized that his “tension” with Belichick was just one of many factors in his decision to join the Buccaneers. He even devised a point system to evaluate both the Patriots and the Buccaneers to help determine where he would play in 2020, with the Buccaneers ultimately scoring higher. “I asked myself, as someone heading into their forties with school-age kids and twenty years worth of battle scars, what truly mattered to me now?” Brady explained. “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, which was also rated a 3, with Tampa scoring a 3 for Bruce Arians. Game day weather was a 2, practice weather a 3. Financial compensation was on the list but was probably not even in the top 10 and 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. It’s not much more complicated than that.” Brady did not disclose his grade for Belichick as the head coach of the Patriots, but it seems plausible that it might have been lower than Bruce Arians’ rating in Tampa Bay.
Regardless, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick now have a stronger relationship than ever since Brady’s retirement, with Belichick notably participating in the 2024 Netflix comedy special, The Roast of Tom Brady, which featured many of Brady’s former New England teammates.
