Tom Brady is all-time great, but history is not on his side
Sources say Tom Brady has an agreement in place to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Credit: Shutterstock/CJ GUNTHER
Twenty years of doing anything is a long time.
Twenty years of doing what Tom Brady did, at the level he did it, with the Patriots?
It’s an eternity.
And it’s something we likely will never see again from any athlete. In any sport.
Brady leaves the Patriots after a career spanning two decades that featured the greatest achievements in pro sports history. He has won a record six Super Bowl championships, played in nine Super Bowls, earned four Super Bowl MVP awards, three regular-season MVP trophies and established a dizzying array of quarterback records along the way. He obliterated the competition in the AFC East, winning 16 divisional championships – dashing the hopes of Jets fans that entire time – and produced the longest-lasting run of success by one player in the history of modern sports.
At 42, Brady may not be quite what he was, but there is enough competitive fire in him to want to play at least three more seasons. The Patriots weren’t willing to give him that much time on a new contract, and Brady read the room correctly, deciding not to return to a team that didn’t want him as much as they once did.
Brady’s next stop is expected to be Tampa, where he has reportedly agreed to a three-year deal worth $90 million. He will now join the likes of legends Brett Favre, Joe Montana, Joe Namath and Johnny Unitas, all of whom played elsewhere after their greatest years. All four Hall of Famers didn’t come close to producing the success with their new teams, and Namath and Johnny U. were burned out husks after leaving the Jets and Colts. Favre and Montana each got as far as the conference championship game – Favre with the Vikings and Montana with the Chiefs – but retired without another Super Bowl appearance.
The same will likely hold true for Brady, who can’t be expected to replicate the success he enjoyed under Bill Belichick in New England. He showed last year he was a declining player, especially in a wild-card playoff loss at home to the Titans, when he simply couldn’t summon the championship performance he’d produced so often in previous years. His last pass in a Patriots’ uniform was a pick-six near the end of a 20-13 loss.
Brady certainly welcomes the challenge of playing for a new team and a new coach in a new city. But his biggest opponent is Father Time, who remains undefeated and will eventually beat Brady. It’s simply a matter of how long it will take.
Belichick will forever be indebted to Brady, and the coach’s Hall of Fame legacy is directly tied to the brilliance of his quarterback. The same can be said for Belichick’s impact on Brady, who almost certainly wouldn’t have achieved this kind of greatness without working for the brightest coach in NFL history.
“Sometimes in life, it takes some time to pass before truly appreciating something or someone, but that has not been the case with Tom,” Belichick said Monday. “He is a special person and the greatest quarterback of all-time.”
It was no secret Brady often chafed under Belichick, a coach who was stingy with compliments, but whose relentlessness and brilliance were the perfect fit for the perfectionist personality of his quarterback. But Belichick will forever appreciate what Brady meant to him, what he meant to the Patriots and what he has meant to football.
“Nothing about the end of Tom’s Patriots career changes how unfathomably spectacular it was,” Belichick said. “With his relentless competitiveness and longevity, he earned everyone’s adoration and will be celebrated forever. It has been a privilege to coach Tom Brady for 20 years. I am extremely grateful for what he did for our team and for me personally.”
And vice versa. Brady thanked Belichick, team owner Robert Kraft and his teammates and coaches in farewell posts on Instagram and Twitter, making it clear he appreciated everything about his experience in New England.
But now it is on to the next – and final – chapter of his career.
Let’s hope it ends well, even if history suggests otherwise.
Bob Glauber retired in 2022 after covering the NFL for nearly 40 years. He was selected in 2021 for the Bill Nunn Career Achievement Award by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is a three-time winner of the New York State Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. President of the PFWA for the 2018-20 seasons, he is the author of “The Forgotten First” and “Guts and Genius.”
