Tom Brady leaving Patriots was ‘right thing for him to do’

The New England Patriots’ two-decade dynasty ended in March 2020 after Tom Brady left New England to sign with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

It was a devastating turn in the fortunes of New England and head coach Bill Belichick, as the Patriots went 29-38 over the next four seasons with just one playoff appearance before Belichick and New England “parted ways” in January 2024.

Brady, meanwhile, played three more seasons in Tampa, winning Super Bowl LV over the Chiefs in January 2021 and continuing to play at a high level until his retirement after the 2022 season.

Over his three years in Tampa, Brady completed 66.7 percent of his passes for 14,643 yards with 108 touchdowns and 33 interceptions. He finished second in 2021 MVP voting.

Brady leaving New England while still having a lot of things left in the tank was a disastrous development for the Patriots and Belichick.

But, talk “Hanging Out with Sean Hannity” aired on Fox News Media Tuesday morningBelichick said Brady’s decision to leave for another team was the right call for the legendary QB.

“Tom leaving was the right thing for him,” Belichick said. “We didn’t have a good team in 2020. We didn’t have a good football team. We had all these guys that left — [Rob] Gronkowski W [Julian] Edelman. Most of our team is gone. [Devin] McCourty and a few others were still there, but they were about to go, too. We were just at the end.

“And honestly, I was happy for him because things went well for him in Tampa, because he was with a team…and then he went on and won. That made me happy for him, because Tom – it wasn’t going to go well in 2020 in New England. That being said, I can vouch for that.”

Belichick’s comments about the state of the Patriots after the 2019 season were spot on — with Brady’s prospects of leading a legitimate Super Bowl contender in New England having been dashed had he stayed the last few seasons of his career.

However, Belichick’s personnel decisions played a large role in Brady’s eventual exit, as New England’s lackluster roster by 2019 was a direct result of years of poor drafting by Belichick as the franchise’s top executive when it came to roster management.

In 2019 alone, the decision to select N’Keal Harry with the 32nd overall pick over future stars like AJ Brown or Deebo Samuel gave Brady few receiving targets to turn to during his final year in Foxborough.

“We put everything we had into the 2019 season, including paying him a lot of money at the end of the year with nothing attached to it,” Belichick said of Brady. “There was no first right of refusal, there was no franchise tag, nothing. So we all understood that there was a good chance he would leave. I think he made a great career decision, of course.”

“I wish we could have done more, but we went as far as we could. And he proved it – he played longer than anyone else, played at a higher level than anyone else. And again, huge credit to him. No one else did it – that was him.”

In a post in his newsletter from March 2025, Brady also acknowledged that “natural tension” with Belichick led to his decision to end his career elsewhere — and that such an exit had been in the works for two or three years before the start of the 2020 campaign.

“The truth is that after twenty years together, a natural tension arose between where Coach Belichick and I were headed in our careers, and where the Patriots were moving as a franchise,” Brady wrote. “It was the kind of tension that could only be resolved through some kind of split or one of us reevaluating our priorities.”

Despite Brady’s rocky exit in New England, it appears that both the former Patriots QB and head coach have been on good terms since their tenures in Foxboro ended. Belichick returns to Gillette Stadium for Brady’s Patriots Hall of Fame ceremony in June 2024.

Speaking to Hannity, Belichick continued to offer praise for the way Brady has conducted himself during his 20 seasons with New England.

“I learned a lot from Tom. I never played quarterback,” Belichick said. “Tom saw the game through the eyes of the quarterback. I saw the games through the eyes of the coach. Together, I think we learned a lot from each other. Tom, how the defensive coaches looked at him or looked at the offense. Me, about what a quarterback can do and what he can’t do, what’s hard, what’s easy, what I can see, what I can’t see, how you see the game.​

Belichick later added: “Tom was not a dominant personality. He was just a great leader.” “He would do whatever you asked him to do. Honestly, if you asked him to go out there and run back and block the defensive end, he would go block the defensive end. He would do whatever the team needed him to do, and he was very competitive.”

Connor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.