Tom Brady Reveals Shocking 'Tension' with Ex Coach

Tom Brady joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers prior to the 2020 season and less than a full year later had given the franchise its second Super Bowl victory.

But what led to that has always been kind of a mystery.

Brady recently revealed just when he and his former New England Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, were not seeing eye to eye and had different professional goals.

For the entirety of his final season in New England, Brady said he knew a change was necessary.

“For me, it was a creeping decision that lived passively in the back of mind for 2-3 years until March of 2020 when a whirlwind of a few days made me realize that a decision was coming sooner rather than later,” Brady wrote. “The reality was, after twenty years together, a natural tension had developed between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise. It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved by some kind of split or one of us reassessing our priorities.”

He continued that when he decided to leave New England he made a list of priorities and decided that Tampa Bay was the the best destination for him.

“What I ended up with was a list of about twenty things that I then ranked and graded on a weighted scale from 1 to 3,” Brady wrote. “The presence of skill players was a 3 in terms of importance, for example, and the Bucs graded out as a 3 because of guys like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin The same was true for the head coach. That was a 3 in importance, and Tampa scored a 3 with Bruce Arians. Game day weather was a 2, practice weather was a 3. 

"Financial compensation was on the list, obviously, but it wasn’t first, it probably wasn’t even top 10, and it definitely didn’t rank as a 3 in importance. In the end, I chose Tampa, almost exactly five years ago now, because, in the aggregate, it graded out higher than New England along those twenty or so dimensions.”

It seems like he made the right decision, and Bucs fans would no doubt agree.