The Buccaneers made a trip to New England as Tom Brady faced his former team on Sunday Night Football, with the Bucs coming out victorious over Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots, 19-17.
There was a lot talked about the relationship between Brady and Belichick, who were together for two decades to lead the Pats to six Super Bowl titles and nine Super Bowl appearances. It was largely revealed that the QB was keeping things private and noted that he hasn’t seen anything truthful from the relationship.
When Brady left the Pats, it was noticeable that Brady was more open and accessible. He has opened up in his time with the Bucs. It’s as if he is aging in reverse, playing as the best version of himself. Meanwhile, Belichick’s team is trying to get into the playoff race.
But after the Sunday Night game, Belichick went to the Bucs locker room for 23 minutes and walked out with Brady.
A USA Today story by Lorenzo Reyes broke down the relationship between Brady and Belichick, and it was said that reports of discontent between the two surfaced as early as 2018, when an ESPN report indicated that there were conflicts developing between Brady, Belichick, and Pats owner Robert Kraft.
One of those primary problems was stemming from the access that Brady’s personal trainer Alex Guerrero got with the team. While Guerrero was previously present on the Pats sidelines and was allowed to be with other Pats players, Belichick later revoked the privileges and banned Guerrero from treating other Patriots players.
He was with the team for years and has previously worked with former Pats linebacker Willie McGinest, and, starting in 2004, Brady. Belichick gave Guerrero free rein in Gillette Stadium and access to team meetings where medical records for Pats players were discussed. Belichick figured that because Guerrero had Brady’s best interests in mind, he would also have the Pats’ players’ best interests in mind, too.
However, Guerrero blamed the Pats’ trainers for the injuries, while offering few insightful opinions of his own. Belichick realized that inviting him was a mistake, and revoked Guerrero’s access to the meetings in 2014 while keeping him as a consultant.
That year was the same year Brady began to talk about playing into his mid-40s and the same year Belichick drafted Jimmy Garoppolo out of Eastern Illinois, which was the first sign that Belichick planned to invest in a future that did not involve Brady.
That same year, the Pats won their 4th Super Bowl title off of Malcolm Butler’s game-winning interception against the Seattle Seahawks, which led to Brady and Belichick drawing strength from different philosophies.
Brady found virtue in his “TB12 Method,” which helped him beat out Father Time, reinforcing the belief that he is not on the downturn of his career, while Belichick found virtue in the Patriot Way, a demanding football-first culture with an endless pursuit of victory.
After the team’s 5th Super Bowl win, this one against the historic comeback from down 28-3 to defeat the Atlanta Falcons, Brady’s standing in the organization got to the point where he was considered management. New players were addressing him as “sir.”
At the same time that Brady gained power within the organization, so did Guerrero, who became a more divisive force in the organization. One player visited him under what was perceived as pressure, declining to allow Guerrero to massage his injured legs out of the fear that one of Guerrero’s deep-force muscle treatments would set back his recovery. Another player was instructed by the team to do squats, but Guerrero instructed him to not do them, per the Boston Sports Journal.
Brady told his teammates, “Bill’s answer to everything is to lift more weights,” a claim that many were feeling that many players and staff felt is unfair, given that the team is dedicated to soft-tissue science and a healthy diet.
By that point, many of the younger Patriots players felt pressured to train at TB12 rather than with the team, and they all asked the QB what was happening. Brady said that he didn’t know anything about pressure.
Belichick continuously felt that he needed to clarify Guerrero’s role within the organization. After a discussion with Brady, he emailed Guerrero to inform him that while he was welcome to work with players seeking out TB12, he was not permitted to be on the sideline or the team headquarters because he is no longer employed by the Pats.
An email intended to solve the problems only generated more of them. Guerrero texted some of the players that he would “need to treat them at the TB12 Sports Therapy Center,” but several players told players, staff, and coaches that Guerrero gave them the impression that Belichick would no longer want to work with him. Many Patriots thought that Guerrero was trying to split the organization by turning the players against Belichick.
Another point stemmed from the presence of Garoppolo. Kraft, who long has had a close relationship with Brady, reportedly kept pressuring Belichick to trade Garoppolo because Kraft felt that the long-term future of the team rested in continuing to build around Brady, who doesn’t provide a lot of help towards his backups. While he and Garoppolo were on friendly terms, Brady, like Joe Montana and Brett Favre before him, didn’t see it as his role to mentor Garoppolo, as nobody helped him during his career.
Garoppolo played well at the start of the 2016 season, starting in place of the suspended Brady, and Belichick began to see Garoppolo as the final piece of the Pats future. But after Garoppolo was knocked out of his 2nd career start because of a shoulder injury, he set up an appointment at TB12.
He told Patriots staffers that when he arrived, the door was locked. He knocked on the door, but nobody was there. The night ended up with him visiting team trainers instead. Guerrero denies refusing to see any player, and Garoppolo was eventually treated at TB12, but it was two weeks after the initial opponent and only after a high-ranking Pats staffer called TB12 to ask why Garoppolo was not admitted.
When Brady met with Kraft to discuss on playing longer, he also met with Belichick, who was skeptical of a long-term contract extension but was content to start Brady as long as he was the team’s bet QB. He knew how much Brady meant to the franchise, insisting that he would not move Brady unless he can convince the coaches to do so. But the reality is that no QB in NFL history has ever played at an elite level in his 40s like Brady. One source said that the meeting ended in a “little blowup.”
Complicating matters was that Garoppolo was a free agent at the end of the season, and that Belichick was not willing to trade him. He previously did trade third-string QB Jacoby Brissett to the Colts for wide receiver Phillip Dorsett. The Pats repeatedly offered Garoppolo four-year contract extensions of between $17M and $18M, which would annually go higher if and when he succeeded Brady, but Garoppolo and his agent, Don Yee, rejected those offers.
Two weeks before the trade deadline, Belichick met with Kraft to discuss the QB situation. The meeting was a long one, lasting half of the day and pushing back Belichick’s other meetings.
The meeting ended with a clear objective: Trade Garoppolo because he was no longer on the team’s long-term plans, and then find the best QB in the draft and develop him. Belichick was furious, but he did what he was asked to do.
He texted 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, the son of Mike Shanahan, who was one of the NFL’s smartest coaches and has personally defended Belichick during the Spygate scandal. Belichick believed that Garoppolo would excel under Shanahan, and asked for just a 2nd round pick.
Patriots staffers were confused as to why Belichick would give away a QB that the coaches saw as a potential top 10 player for much less than he could have gotten. While most of them understood that it was one of those extreme cases, but felt that Belichick earned the right to make football decisions.
Brady, on the other hand, felt liberated. A few days later, players and staff saw that he seemed excited because he was now the team’s present and future. The team’s new backup, Brian Hoyer, was a longtime friend of Brady but not a threat to take the starting job.
Belichick had the idea that long-term security does not exist in the NFL throughout his career, and acceptance of Belichick as the ultimate authority as part of the Patriot Way as selflessness and sacrifice.
For years, Brady was the perfect model for Belichick’s system, a future Hall of Famer who can withstand tough coaching. Brady knew that criticism would strike during Monday morning film sessions, but he could take it, secure not only in the knowledge of his impact of Belichick’s career but also in part that the coach was doing it to send a message that nobody was above criticism.
But Brady was less fine with the criticism in his final years with the Pats, which leads to the last point, being that Brady grew tired of the constant criticism Belichick gives his players, no matter the experience or standing, and the lack of input he was given over the roster decisions.
People were saying that it started with the Pats’ win in the 2016 Divisional Round over the Houston Texans, where Brady completed just 18 of 38 passes and threw two interceptions. Belichick ripped Brady in a way the future Hall of Famer’s teammates have never seen, mentioning his carelessness with the ball. After replaying a Brady interception, he told the team, “This will get us beat. We were lucky to get away with a win.”
The criticism carried on to the later years, and, atypically, he missed a lot of practices as he battled various injuries. In the team’s private evaluations, he showed glimpses of a 40-year-old QB even if he was in contention for MVP and is as deadly as ever with the game on the line. Shoulder and Achilles injuries did more than undermine claims that the TB12 Method can help you play football virtually pain-free.
Some changes hampered the offense and affected the depth chart, such as one play in the 4th quarter against the Los Angeles Chargers where Brady had a clean pocket and a first read open deep, possibly going for a touchdown, but Brady got rid of the ball quickly over the middle to Chris Hogan, who had nowhere to go with the ball and was hit hard on the shoulder, injuring it. He missed all but one game of the rest of the season.
And even with everything that Brady did for the franchise, Belichick tried to move on from his longtime QB the year before the Pats won their 6th Super Bowl title in Super Bowl LIII.
When the relationship between Brady and Belichick got cold, it was clear that the GOAT would not finish his career with the Patriots. It was not said directly from Belichick, but the fact that he let Brady walk in free agency suggested he felt that he could continue contending for championships with someone else.
All this was leading up to Brady’s departure from the Patriots, ending his 20-season run with the team, signing with the Buccaneers on March 17th, 2020, going on to win Super Bowl LV with them, while Belichick bet on Cam Newton, who didn’t even close to living up to expectations.
The tight end spot has also become a black hole after the initial retirement of Rob Gronkowski, and it showed during Brady’s final season in Foxborough and in Newton’s only season there. Now Belichick is hoping that the trio of Mac Jones, Jonnu Smith, and Hunter Henry can replicate the production left behind by Brady and Gronkowski.
On the other side, Bruce Arians had no problem building the offense around the aging Brady, and certainly didn’t have an issue giving the GOAT what he wanted: Trading for Gronkowski and signing Antonio Brown. Considering that Belichick was planning for the future dating back to four seasons ago, he couldn’t have imagined that the duo of Brady and Gronkowski would still be tearing up defenses in 2021.
From the start of the season, when they won the season opener against the Dallas Cowboys, they let Belichick know that they are far from finished.
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