The greatest exits
How bad of a Tuesday was it for Boston?
It was St. Patrick’s Day, a great high holiday in this city with a rich Irish heritage, but the bars were closed because of the threat posed by the COVID-19 virus. The virus is also why there are no games to watch in the sports crazed city. Then things got worse. Tom Brady announced he would not return to the New England Patriots for the 2020 season.
Of course, it was not just Boston. Patriots fans across New England and the country had to process the sad reality that the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL was moving on to complete his career elsewhere.
Patriots Nation had braced itself for this possibility. Brady played under a one-year contract in 2019, paid $23 million, placing him in an absurd 10th place pay wise among starting quarterbacks. When no deal on a new contract was reached, Brady let the world know via social media he was moving on, likely to a significantly larger pay day.
Is there is a villain in this drama? The most likely candidate would be Coach Bill Belichick, who makes the personnel decisions. Brady-Belichick is the most successful quarterback-coach combination in the history of the NFL, by far.
But Belichick is a cold-blooded calculator when it comes to roster decisions and apparently had no intention of overpaying for a quarterback who will be 43 when the next season starts, even if that 43-year-old is Tom Brady. It is hard to make Belichick a villain for making the kind of decisions that produced the greatest NFL dynasty in the free-agent era, dominance most saw as impossible.
Of course, Brady had a lot to do with that dominance.
Owner Robert Kraft could have intervened, but is better off letting the coach make football decisions.
So, here’s to the memories. Nine Super Bowl appearances and six championships. Thirteen appearances in the AFC Championship game, including eight in a row from 2011 to 2018. Four Super Bowl and three regular season MVPs. A spectacular career passing rating of 97.0.
As of now, second-year, little-used backup quarterback Jarret Stidham is next up, a 133rd pick in the draft. Sort of like 2001 when star Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe went down with an injury in the second game. Belichick substituted a second-year, little-used backup quarterback, a 199th draft pick. His name was Tom Brady.