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Tom Brady Reflects On ‘Tension’ With Bill Belichick At End Of Career
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Tom Brady has reflected on the “tension” he experienced with Bill Belichick toward the end of his career.
Tom Brady Talks Tension With Bill Belichick
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Brady wrote about his free agency during March of 2020 in his weekly newsletter.
During his 23-year career, Brady only entertained free agency once. After the 2019 season, Brady beganseeing things differently from New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. This “natural tension” led to their split.
“For me, it was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of 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 wrote. “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.”
The GOAT quarterback and the GOAT coach went their separate ways. Brady signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, while Belichick remained the head coach of the Patriots.
Brady and the Bucs won the Super Bowl in his first season in Tampa.
Other Lessons From Tom Brady About Free Agency
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Why did Brady choose Tampa?
The seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback wrote down his priorities as to what he was looking for in free agency.
When Tampa Bay came into the picture as a serious option for me, all I did over those few days in March was assess and reassess my priorities,” Brady wrote. “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?”
Brady then used a scale to determine specific aspects of the Bucs, including players and coaches.
“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,” Brady explained. “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.
After completing his grades, Tampa ranked higher than New England, so Brady signed with the Bucs.
Brady played for three seasons with the Bucs before retiring after the 2022 season.
