Bill Belichick (left) and Tom Brady teamed up to win six Super Bowls during their time together with the Patriots.
Bill Belichick (left) and Tom Brady teamed up to win six Super Bowls during their time together with the Patriots.Jim Davis/Globe Staff
From “Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate” by Gary Myers. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
It was the type of glorious New England evening that makes the six-state region one of the most desirable summertime vacation spots in the country. Sixty thousand fans, many outfitted in blue or white No. 12 jerseys, were streaming into Gillette Stadium to shower Tom Brady with unconditional affection and celebrate his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.
Foxborough, Massachusetts June 12, 2024
On the day of Brady’s ceremony, which somewhat surprisingly included mentor-turned-adversary-turned-friend Bill Belichick on the star-studded guest list, I drove from my home outside New York City to Foxborough to attend the festivities and dig into the greatest un-answered and fascinating question in NFL history.
Was it Brady or Belichick?
The best quarterback in NFL history or the best coach in NFL history?
The Patriots had them both. Pick one. Who deserves the most credit for the two-decade dynasty? It can’t be a 50–50 split. One of them had to be more responsible for the magnificent run of sustained success.
Would they have failed to win without each other? Belichick had already flopped in Cleveland and early in his New England career without Brady, and Brady might never have received a fair chance in the NFL without Belichick. We care about the dynasty debate, we argue about it, we choose sides because, well . . .
“They never run out of beers in bars, and people got to have something to do while they are there,” joked Cris Collinsworth, the Emmy Award–winning analyst from NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
Twenty years of Brady and Belichick in New England ended in March 2020 when Brady knocked on the door of his next-door neighbor Robert Kraft in Brookline, walked past the life-size mannequin of a policeman in the entryway meant to scare away potential bad guys, and informed the Patriots owner he was finishing his career elsewhere and Belichick was all his. Brady was crying. He loved the Patriots, the fans, Kraft and his family, and the legacy he had created and was leaving behind, but he could not handle one more day with Belichick as his boss. Kraft said it was like losing a child. Tom Brady Sr. knew how Kraft felt. After his son decided to attend the University of Michigan over their hometown University of California, Berkeley, for college, Brady Sr. went to counseling for months to get over his separation anxiety.
"Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate" was written by Gary Myers.
"Brady vs. Belichick: The Dynasty Debate" was written by Gary Myers.St. Martin’s Press
“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,” Brady wrote on his website in 2025. “It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.”
Before he left Kraft’s house, Brady’s emotional exit meeting included a courtesy phone call to Belichick. Two days later, Brady signed a two-year, $50 million free agent fully guaranteed contract with Tampa.
Belichick was forthcoming when I interviewed him for this book. He didn’t have any regrets about the way things ended with Brady not finishing his career with the Patriots. He said 2020 “was an impossible situation in New England. He absolutely made the right decision. We could not put a good team around him. Financially, after stretching for ten years, we ran out of cap space and had to rebuild the team; 2019 was our last real opportunity to win; 2020 was a rebuild, and we were back in the playoffs in 2021.”
Of course, Belichick was responsible for the dismal state of the roster in 2020 after years of questionable drafts, poor free agent signing decisions and not having a Brady succession plan in place after Jimmy Garoppolo was traded to the 49ers in 2017. The 2021 playoff season ended with a 47-17 wild-card loss in Buffalo. Things fell apart for Belichick and the Patriots in 2022, and they imploded the next year. Kraft fired Belichick in January 2024 after a 4–13 season.
Brady proved he could win without Belichick by adding his seventh Lombardi Trophy and fifth Super Bowl MVP Trophy in his first year out on his own in Tampa. Belichick repeatedly proved in Cleveland and New England he could win only with Brady. The Tampa years for Brady and pre- and post-Brady years for Belichick are part of the debate and considered by many as the tie-breaker, but ultimately, their years apart don’t impact the evaluation of what they did together in New England.
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Was it Brady or Belichick?
“It was a match made from the gods, the football gods,” Patriots three-time Super Bowl champion wide receiver Julian Edelman said.
Belichick picked the players. He was smart. He created the culture and set the expectations. Brady made it work whether Belichick gave him David Patten or Randy Moss. As the partnership reached its second decade, their importance to the success of the franchise flip-flopped. If Belichick’s coaching carried Brady to his first three Super Bowl titles, then Brady put Belichick on his back and carried him to the second set of three Super Bowls. He covered up for Belichick’s personnel blunders by raising the level of play of everyone around him, the intangible quality that separates the truly elite quarterbacks.
Brady’s big finish to his Patriots Hall of Fame speech made New England weep.
“I am Tom Brady,” he said passionately. “And I am a Patriot.”
Brady threw kisses to the adoring crowd. The fans already had greeted Belichick with a loud and long two-minute standing ovation as he prepared to speak in his first public appearance since Kraft fired him five months earlier.
“I was and am very appreciative of the support from the fans,” Belichick told me months later. “Sometimes as a coach, you lose sight of the impact your team has on the individual members of the community and their families. The stories from the fans are heartwarming.”
It was the fans finally getting the opportunity to say thank you and goodbye to the coach who not only turned their team into six-time champions but made ratty sweatshirts with the sleeves chopped off into a bizarre fashion statement. “It was Patriots Nation tipping their cap to their ball coach,” Edelman said. “It was New England loving Coach Belichick and saying, ‘Hey, man, we appreciate everything you did for us.’ ”
Belichick was unable to land an NFL head coaching job in 2024 after his dismal ending in New England. Owners and general managers were scared off, believing he wanted the total control he had in New England despite Belichick trying to convince them he just wanted to coach. He was considered a building disruptor.
One prominent owner with an opening consulted with Hall of Fame coach Jimmy Johnson, a Belichick pal, as he did his homework on Belichick, although by the tone of the conversation, he had his mind made up before he called. “He’s seventy-two years old,” the owner said. “How much longer is he going to coach?”
Johnson, who advised the owner to hire Belichick, explained that football was still his life and that he had plenty of energy and passion. The owner has never won a Super Bowl and if Belichick stuck around three years and produced one championship, wouldn’t he sign up for that? The owner, Dean Spanos of the Los Angeles Chargers, instead hired Jim Harbaugh, the hottest name on the market, and he won 11 games and made the playoffs in his first season.
Prior to accepting the University of North Carolina job late in 2024, Belichick was so desperate to get back into the NFL that he even reached out to an intermediary for the New York Jets, the team he despises, about their opening. The Jets probably had a hard time getting even the one-word answer out — no — because they were laughing so hard.
Tom Brady Sr. has always been the Tom Brady who speaks his mind. I always thought Tom Sr. said what Tom was thinking but couldn’t say himself. Tom Sr. and Tom are each other’s best friend. Dad is not a big fan of Belichick. “I mean, once in a while, you want to be told you did a nice job, you know? I think the breaking point really came with the lack of appreciation,” Brady Sr. said. “That would be my take. That there was just absolutely no appreciation.”
Former Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who beat Brady and Belichick twice in the Super Bowl, can understand Brady getting worn down by Belichick not treating him any differently than the backup left guard. Brady was raising children at home and being treated like a child at work with his boss constantly yelling at him in practice and meetings. “I can see from a player’s standpoint of that getting old and not liking it or getting feelings hurt,” Manning said. “When you’re working with someone for 20 years and there’s probably always that, ‘Hey, lay off on me a little bit. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.’ You can get frustrated with that.”
Brady might never have been heard from in the NFL without Belichick rescuing him in the draft and keeping him as the fourth-string quarterback as a rookie in 2000. Belichick feared he would be fired after the 2001 season if he didn’t win. They saved each other’s career and needed each other to get The Dynasty rolling, but ultimately it was not an equal partnership.
On my judge’s scorecard, it’s Brady 63%, Belichick 37%.