It’s not every year that we get to see a 7-time Super Bowl champion take on a former team he spent two decades with. I guess it’s a couple of years too late to say that Tom Brady is just THAT guy. The New England Patriots and arguably football’s most decorated player of all time will not only be playing in one of the biggest regular-season games of his life, which says something for a guy that has started in nine Super Bowls.
If you are a Patriots fan, this sucks. There is no way to sugarcoat it. Yes, it was and always will be the glory days. You can’t draft any signal-caller 199th overall, let alone 1st overall and expect them to be the next “Tom Brady”. A few can try, many will fail. There will be no quarterback/head coach duo that will come close to what Brady and Bill Belichick accomplished together. They were the heart and soul of this Patriots organization for the greater part of two decades. But all that seems to find itself lost in the smoke and dust from time to time as these two football gods were part of one of the most unexpected breakups in NFL history.
11 MAY 2015
If there really is a “beginning” to this story, it’s the offseason of 2015 heading into the 2016-17 NFL season. Flashback to the 2014-15 season, Tom Brady and the Patriots were playing in their 4th consecutive AFC Championship game in hopes to clinch a Super Bowl trip for the first time in 3 seasons. New England went on to defeat the Indianapolis Colts in that game and advance to Super Bowl XLIX against the Seahawks. A Super Bowl in which Brady and Belichick won their 4th title together. Although emotions tend to ride high in the right direction, that wasn’t the case for these champs. Following that successful 2014 campaign, reports of “deflate-gate” had surfaced, an investigation in which Brady and the Patriots were accused of deflating footballs used in the AFC Championship game against the Colts. The league spent upward of $22 million over the course of two years to investigate, litigate and discipline Brady and the organization.
According to ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, those close to Brady reportedly felt like the 4-time champ at the time was ‘abandoned’ and left out to dry by head coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft during the deflate-gate controversy. On May 11, 2015, the ruling came down on Brady who was hit with a 4-game suspension.
They say time heals all wounds and in many cases, yes, but it’s not far-fetched to say the way Brady was treated during this controversy left a dent in the Belichick-Brady relationship on and off the field.
Then the 2016 season began with arguably the greatest QB of all time sitting at home for the first month as a 24-year-old Jimmy Garoppolo took over as the starting QB… something Brady reportedly ‘feared’ according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. There was a reason why the quarterback wanted to stay in games even if it was a blowout…he never wanted to give anyone another chance to take a snap under center as long as he was a Patriot. In fact according to Seth Wickersham of ESPN.com, Brady “is famously unhelpful toward his backups” and offered little in terms of advice to Garoppolo.
Eventually, Brady’s 4-game suspension came to end and the time had come to reclaim the reins in New England. Sure, the all-pro quarterback might have been left out to dry by the Patriots organization during the infamous deflate-gate scandal, but if there’s one thing that solves everything in sports, it’s winning.
New England went on to win another Super Bowl ring, and this was a special one. Down 28-3 midway through the 3rd quarter against the Falcons, Brady led his troops in the first (and only) Super Bowl game to go into overtime that inevitably ended in a fifth championship victory for both him and Belichick.
October 2017
Fresh off that fifth Super Bowl victory, the Patriots found themselves as favorites to repeat as champs, but head coach Bill Belichick had some moves to make in a rather crowded Patriots’ QB room with talent across the board. A 40-year-old Tom Brady, a 25-year-old Jimmy Garoppolo, and a 24-year-old Jacoby Brissett.
Prior to the start of the 2017 season, New England went ahead and traded QB Jacoby Brissett to the Indianapolis Colts as Andrew Luck at the time was coming off shoulder surgery (unlikely to play week 1). Brissett went on to play the entire year leading Indy to an abysmal 4-12 record. Meanwhile, in New England, things began to heat up as winter approached.
October 30, 2017, is the day everything changed. It may have been the day before Halloween but nothing was scarier than Belichick who was business as usual… There was no surprise that teams had inquired about the 25-year-old backup to Brady, Jimmy Garoppolo.
“We used to call him about once a week back then asking if he’d move one of them,” says an NFL executive whose team needed a quarterback. “And we weren’t alone, either.”
In fact, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reported that the Cleveland Browns offered the Patriots “a second and change” prior to the 2017 draft. The offers were there and teams did not stop calling. The sense of urgency to move Garoppolo was growing… or was it? Belichick arguably had the greatest quarterback in Tom Brady but many around the league believed it was Garoppolo who he was grooming for the future. Before they knew it, the month of October was coming to an end as the trade deadline loomed.
“I remember getting down to the wire and telling our QBs coach that we’d just make a run at Jimmy in free agency,” says the player personnel director.
Belichick took things down to the wire as it was around 8 p.m. ET and the news broke out. The Patriots had agreed to trade a signal-caller out west to San Francisco… but not the one the New England head coach wanted to trade.
The Truth Comes Out…
There was an unforeseen amount of buzz around the NFL that the 49ers originally asked for Jimmy Garoppolo, however, Belichick instead offered Brady. Yes, you read that right… the one and only Tom Brady. A Patriots source confirms that’s how it went down, and a 49ers source close to general manager John Lynch says Lynch found himself dumbfounded when he heard the counter offer. The first-year GM had the chance to bring the “GOAT” back to his hometown, but it obviously did not happen as a source close to Belichick said, “Kraft shut that sh*t down fast”. In fact, Bill Belichick was reportedly ‘furious and demoralized’ after practically being ordered to trade Jimmy Garoppolo in a move that benefited the 25-year-old more than the Patriots.
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was thrilled to land Garoppolo and even said the trade was ‘really fun’ to make with Bill Belichick. But Belichick was not so happy. In fact, he was apparently so irritated over the fact that the Patriots went through with trade anyway that he apparently inquired about the Washington and New York Giants’ head-coaching jobs afterward, according to Gary Tanguay of NBC Sports Boston.
For the 2017 New England Patriots, all it took was a mere 24 hours to change the course of the NFL as we know it. October 30, 2017, will forever be a day 49er fans everywhere will reminisce as they acquired Garoppolo from New England in exchange for a second-round pick. But in addition to that draft pick, the Patriots got a pissed-off Brady and a ‘demoralized’ Belichick. The head coach that Brady had spent 17 seasons and won 5 championships with at the time, wanted to trade him away in favor of the 25-year-old Garoppolo.
That very day is when Brady quite possibly began plotting his infamous departure from a franchise he had spent two decades with. And the man behind all of this was none other than who many refer to as one of the greatest head coach of all time: Bill Belichick. A break-up between Brady and the Patriots seemed inevitable once there was buzz that Belichick wanted to get rid of his beloved signal-caller.
Put yourself in Brady’s shoes. You would feel like a pawn in Belichick’s bigger picture. You feel like you’d known a guy, let alone your own head coach after 20 seasons. Brady, a 199th draft pick who was a 5-time champ at the time, still felt like he had something to prove. But once again reality kicked in and Brady, like all of us, reminded himself that sports are a business.
Brady reached the promised land over the next two seasons since trading Garoppolo away, building on an untouchable legacy he and Belichick shared. A Super Bowl loss to the Eagles was not the best of memories but the Patriots bounced right back and earned their 6th championship victory against the team they had beat 17 years earlier in the Super Bowl… the Los Angeles Rams.
Winning this time did not bring closure. It did not bring validation. It did not change the fact that Belichick once wanted to get rid of Brady. The quarterback knew this day was coming and he orchestrated his final act as a Patriot… an infamous departure.
“He tore up deals after ’17, after ’18, and got it so the Patriots couldn’t [franchise] tag him. Dude was planning this day all along,” speculates another former teammate.
If he was going to leave the franchise that he won 6 championships with, best believe he was going to do it on his own terms. He deserved this. He earned this.
18 March 2020
What started off as a 40 some degree morning in Foxborough, Massachusetts turned into a cold, cold day. Tom Brady announced he was no longer staying put with the organization that drafted him a little over two decades ago. The decorated signal-caller took it to social media to share the shocking news.
“Although my football journey will take place elsewhere, I appreciate everything that we have achieved and am grateful for our incredible TEAM accomplishments.”
– Tom Brady via Instagram
According to multiple reports, Brady made no calls to the Patriots to work on a deal for the upcoming season. Instead, he waited it out and evaluated all of his options, ultimately picking the best situation for himself and his family. That was Tampa Bay. They say all good things must come to an end. But this was not the end for Tom Brady. His chapter with the Patriots had closed. 20 seasons that included 74,571 passing yards, 541 touchdowns, 14x Pro-Bowler, 6x Super Bowl Champ, 4x Super Bowl MVP, 3x NFL MVP.
In his first season with Tampa Bay, Brady proved to the league that he was on the better half of this break up leading the Buccaneers to their second championship in franchise history. He also became the oldest starting quarterback to win a Super Bowl, breaking his own record when he played in Super Bowl LIII against the Rams.
On Sunday he returns to Gillette Stadium. The home that he and Belichick built to be one of the most dreaded locations by opposing teams in NFL history. The future Hall of Famer may be a visitor in Foxborough on Sunday but it most definitely will feel like a home game. Brady has 115 QB wins at Gillette Stadium, 20 more than the next closest QB in a single stadium in NFL history. To make things even more interesting, the Patriots have not lost each of their first 3 home games of a season since 1993. The team has already lost their opening 2 home games for the first time since 2000, and Brady could add to their ugly start.
But more importantly, the signal-caller is treating this game like any other. A loss to the Rams last week just adds fuel to the fire as Brady is simply looking for a strong bounce-back win.
Bucs’ HC Bruce Arians today: “A hell of a week of practice. You could really feel the difference in intensity this week. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with [Tom] Brady, it has to do with losing.”
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 1, 2021
Brady’s return to New England may be straight out of a movie as he squares off against rookie QB Mac Jones who was born the day Brady started his first game at Michigan. To put the cherry on top, the quarterback is a mere 68 yards away from breaking the NFL’s all-time passing yards record in the stadium where it all started. Safe to say that it’ll be quite the homecoming to kickoff primetime football in October.
