The story behind the split of Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the Patriots

quote:

---

WE LOOKED FOR clues. Tom Brady's final news conference -- was that a clue? We wondered what he would say after the New England Patriots lost to the Tennessee Titans in the first round of the playoffs. More than that, we wondered how he would act.

"Well done is better than well said," his father always told him, and so we'd been trained to watch his body language for hints into his thinking. We'd watched him as he bit his lip and gutted through the Patriot Way when Bill Belichick would cut or trade key players; watched when he stood alone during his Deflategate news conference; watched when he sat onstage with Jim Gray in 2018 and, in response to a question about whether he felt appreciated by his bosses, blurted out, "I plead the fifth!"; watched to see how he handled a postseason win, when he would hug Belichick, or loss, when he could look almost physically ill.

---

quote:

---

WE LISTENED AS those close to Brady insisted he would be the first to go. Tom Brady Sr. once told me that once Belichick found a quarterback "who is better for a dollar less, [Tom will] be gone." Brady Sr. also told Leibovich, "It will end badly." Some close to Brady actually looked forward to that day, in a weird way, believing that the team would collapse without him -- without the human backstop who bailed out everyone's mistakes, who helped Belichick to all but two of his winning seasons as a head coach, who engineered five Super Bowl wins when trailing or tied in the fourth quarter.

---