It’s been five years since Tom Brady and Bill Belichick parted ways after two decades of dominance in New England, and now Brady is sharing the secret behind that breakup.
In his “199” newsletter, Brady reveals that “tension” with his longtime head coach, Bill Belichick, was at the core of his decision to leave the Patriots.
“The reality was,” wrote Brady, “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.”
Consistent with Brady’s calculating mind, he writes in the newsletter that he decided to depart from New England after evaluating 20 factors, which he rated in levels of importance from one to three. Among the factors were everything from weather to coaching staff.
“In the end,” Brady explained, “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’s system for rating factors of importance seems to have paid off.
He threw for over 14,000 yards and 108 touchdowns in his three years in Tampa, and won his seventh Super Bowl. The Patriots haven’t won a playoff game since Brady’s departure, and Belichick was let go at the end of the 2023 season.
