Patriots fans are still rooting for Tom Brady

F OX B O ROU GH , M A SS.» As soon as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the NFC title game, Brian Pope went shopping for a Tom Brady jersey to wear when he watches them play in the Super Bowl.

One problem: Pope lives in Connecticut. And he isn’t really even a Buccaneers fan — or at least he wasn’t, until Brady left the New England Patriots to make another championship run with Tampa Bay.

“I’ll be watching, and I’ll be rooting for Brady,” Pope said as he eyed a rack of the quarterback’s Patriots and Michigan Wolverines jerseys in the Gillette Stadium pro shop on Monday.

“I wish he hadn’t left, but so be it,” Pope said. “I’m still a Patriots fan, but I’m not upset that he’s playing in the Super Bowl, by any stretch.”

Brady won an NFL record six Super Bowls with the Patriots, and he also played in three others during a 20-year career in New England that ended when he signed with the Buccaneers as a free agent in March.

Since then, the fans he left behind have been following him from afar. And now that he is getting ready to play in his 10th Super Bowl, many are rooting for him as if he’d never left.

“Hewashere20years;hedida great job; never got into trouble. So why not pursue his dream,” said Kathie McCarthy, who was at Gillette Stadium to receive her COVID-19 vaccination. “I wish there was some way we could have kept him.”

Boston has a long history of watching its star athletes leave, dating back at least as far as the Red Sox’s sale of Babe Ruth to the rival Yankees in 1919. Ruth went on to win four World Series in New York; the Yankees won 26 before the Red Sox won it all again, snapping an 86-year drought in 2004.

Bruins star Bobby Orr finished his career with the Chicago Blackhawks, and fellow Hall of Fame defenseman Ray Bourque was traded to the Colorado Avalanche for the chance at a Stanley Cup that the Bruins were unable to give him.

And just last summer, 2018 AL MVP Mookie Betts was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers, following a trail out of town previously blazed by Red Sox stars like Ruth, Carlton Fisk and Roger Clemens. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series.

“This might be worse than Mookie because (Brady) has been there so long and won so many championships,” Pope said. “I obviously wasn’t here when Babe Ruth left, but I’d say it’s got to equal that.”