Belichick 'Never Believed' Brady Would Leave Patriots?!
All great dynasties eventually fall, and even the New England Patriots, who won an unprecedented six Super Bowls in 20 years, are no exception.
The first pillar to fall came when legendary quarterback Tom Brady left in 2020. With a 29-39 record and only one brief playoff appearance in the four years since, the Patriots never really recovered after Brady's departure.
Even though the Patriots' dynastic run essentially died when Brady left, the departure of longtime coach Bill Belichick earlier this month severed any remaining ties to the team's glory days.
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There's plenty of reasons why the Patriots' dynasty came crashing down, but like many great empires before it, a huge reason why was a general lack of foresight. According to a report by NBC Sports Boston's Tom Curran, Belichick was never really prepared for Brady actually leaving New England, and he paid the price for it later on.
"Belichick never truly believed Brady would leave," Curran wrote. "Even when the two men met just days before Brady’s contract expired, sources said Belichick said the Patriots couldn’t carry a salary cap hit of more than $22.5 million.
“'He talked to (Brady) like he was still on the team, not like he was about to be a free agent,' the source told me."
This is obviously far from the first report detailing Brady and Belichick's falling out. After all, the contract Brady signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers - a two-year, fully-guaranteed deal worth $50 million - is essentially what he was asking the Patriots for, so it wasn't a financial issue.
No, instead it was a slow buildup of multiple nagging issues. From Belichick's questionable personnel decisions to small slights over the years, Brady decided the best path forward for him was doing the unthinkable and leaving New England.
He proved himself right, and Belichick wrong, immediately after, winning his NFL-record seventh Super Bowl in his first season with the Buccaneers.
Maybe Brady doesn't win another Super Bowl if he decides to stay in New England, hell, one could even argue that he likely doesn't. Either way, though, his departure is symptomatic of the issues that brought the once-dominant Patriots crashing down to Earth.
