Kraft implies Brady left due to relationship with coach
Insiders say star QB resolved to leave after coach tried to trade him to 49ers in 2017
If you’re still wondering why
Tom Brady chose not to re-sign in New England for a 21st season, to instead throw in his lot with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for two years, you’re sure not alone.
It’s still the talk of the NFL town, so to speak.
And for a second time this week, Patriots owner Robert Kraft on Friday essentially pointed the finger of blame at his head coach and football czar, Bill Belichick.
Shortly after Tuesday’s bombshell announcement by Brady that he wouldn’t return to the Patriots, Kraft told Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston, that “this isn’t the way I wanted it to end,” noting, “I just don’t think (Brady) was going to be happy staying in our system, at this point.”
On Friday, NFL Network’s Foxboro correspondent, Michael Giardi, tweeted that Kraft “made this analogy about Tom Brady’s departure: ‘Think about loving your wife & for whatever reason, there’s something — her father or mother — that makes life impossible for you & you have to move on, but you don’t want to.”
There’s a first time for everything, and that might have been the first earthly comparison of Belichick to a mother-in-law.
Then came this, from the
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport: The Patriots “likely would have done” the same contract with Brady, but “Brady never came to them with his desire to return. So there was no offer from (New England). In the end, only the Bucs and Chargers made offers.”
That jibes with speculative reports from earlier this week, and especially with a riveting piece from Bleacher Report’s
Matt Miller, in which he strung together events since October 2017, and with sourced confirmations, concluded that the departure by a miffed Brady was inevitable.
Miller theorizes with convincing evidence that Brady came to the decision he some day was going to leave New England upon learning in October 2017 that Belichick counter-offered him as trade bait to the San Francisco 49ers, in the hours leading up to the trade deadline. The Niners had merely asked Belichick for the umpteenth time that year about trading for Brady’s backup, Jimmy Garoppolo.
It has been reported, but never confirmed by principals, that Kraft had to step in to block that attempted move.
“A Patriots source confirms that’s how it went down,” Miller wrote this week, “and a 49ers source close to (GM) John
Lynch says the first-time general manager couldn’t believe his ears when he heard the counter-offer.”
Belichick eventually did trade Garoppolo that month to the Niners, for shocking little in return — just a second-round draft pick. But the damage to Brady’s relationship with Belichick was done.
“Brady, Belichick and Kraft haven’t been the same since,” Miller quoted a source close to Belichick as saying. “Tom learned that Bill was ready to get rid of him. And that lit a fire under his ass.”
It also apparently lit a desire in Brady’s heart to leave Belichick high and dry at some point.
“Every move of Brady’s since that late October (2017) meeting of the Patriots holy trinity,” Miller wrote, citing a former Brady teammate as source, “has been preparing for this moment.”
Remember, that particular trade discussion in 2017 went down only eight months after Brady led the Patriots to the greatest Super Bowl comeback win in history, and during a season in which he was named NFL MVP.
Who trades away the reigning Super Bowl MVP in the middle of a season in which he would be named league MVP?
That Belichick could even consider trading him away, even if he was 40 at the time, must have hurt the uber-proud Brady to the core.
That Kraft keeps all but saying Brady’s poisoned relationship with Belichick is the reason he wanted out of Foxborough tells you the relationship between the owner and his top football man isn’t exactly in perfect lock-step, either.
Otherwise Kraft would shut up about the reasons for Brady’s bolting to protect Belichick.
Perhaps Kraft’s view of Belichick in relation to Brady’s departure is similar to what the owner said several weeks after Belichick’s controversial benching of starting cornerback Malcolm Butler in the February 2018 Super Bowl — a narrow loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, even if he made an error — and this is true of any of our managers — that if they’re doing it for the right reason, then I support them 100 per cent. And I have never had one instance in the 18 years where Bill hasn’t done what he believes is in the best interests of our team to help us win games.”
And at almost any cost, as we have come to learn time and again. Even at the cost of disenfranchising Tom Brady at the zenith of his career.
Tom learned that Bill was ready to get rid of him. And that lit a fire under his ass.