Tom Brady and Bill Belichick accomplished things in the NFL that other quarterback and coach tandems could only dream of doing. But admittedly, the two didn’t always see eye to eye, which Brady outlined in his most recent newsletter, led to a “natural tension” that could only be solved by a split.
Brady has been incredibly complimentary about his former coach over the years. Most recently, during an appearance on The Herd with Colin Cowherd back in January, Brady outlined how he and Belichick “always had a great relationship” outside of the general differences that can build over the course of spending 20 years with the same coach.
On Monday, Tom Brady expanded on some of the differences he had with Belichick in his weekly newsletter. In his newsletter focused on his thoughts on NFL free agency, Brady outlined how he believed there was a “natural tension” that developed in New England, which played a factor in his departure to 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 guy coming off the last year of his rookie deal,” Brady wrote. “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.
“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.”
Again, it’s understandable that two strong personalities like Brady and Belichick ultimately got burnt out from one another by the end of their time together in New England. But it is interesting to hear that his feelings toward Belichick played such a factor in his decision to leave New England.
Tom Brady would go on to add that while his “tension” with Bill Belichick was one reason why he decided to leave for the Buccaneers, it was far from the only reason. In fact, Brady ultimately graded both the Patriots and the Buccaneers on a point system to determine where he would play in 2020, a grading system that the Buccaneers ultimately bested the Patriots in.
“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?” added Brady. “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. It’s not much more complicated than that.”
Brady didn’t include what his grade was for Belichick as the head coach of the Patriots. But by the sounds of things, he perhaps could have graded lower on his scale than Bruce Arians did in Tampa Bay.
Regardless, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick now seem to have as strong a relationship as ever now that Brady’s playing days are done, with Belichick notably taking part in the 2024 Netflix comedy special, The Roast of Tom Brady, which included many of Brady’s former teammates in New England.