Now that former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is nearly three years removed from his playing career, he is making his thoughts more known on why he left Foxboro in 2020.
Brady won six Super Bowls with the Patriots between 2001 and 2019 under former head coach Bill Belichick. Despite the wild success, there were challenges, which Brady acknowledged in his latest newsletter on Monday.
"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 explained. "It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities."
New England had just lost a Wild Card game to the Tennessee Titans in a season where the Patriots started 8-0 despite issues at wide receiver. Brady ultimately left in free agency for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers where he finished his career and won one more Super Bowl.
"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 weighed factors such as the roster, coaching, compensation, and climate. He notably had the chance to join forces with two Pro Bowl-caliber wide receivers in Chris Godwin and Mike Evans.
"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," Brady wrote. "It's not much more complicated than that."
Things have been complicated for the Patriots since, amid a carousel of quarterbacks and head coaches, and the team hasn't won a playoff game since.
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This story was originally published March 30, 2025 at 9:00 AM.