Boston Globe journalist Tara Sullivan joined Joe Molloy on Off The Ball to discuss Tom Brady.
Tom Brady built his hall of fame career with the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick.
He then left his Boston base to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before last season. Brady went on to win the Super Bowl with the Buccaneers, while Belichick started to rebuild his roster. Not surprisingly, the Buccaneers and Brady were able to win the game.
But Belichick didn't make it easy on his former quarterback. He relied on a missed field goal in the final minute to hold on and didn't throw a touchdown pass.
In reality, the game itself was largely inconsequential. It was a regular-season game early in the year and the full focus was on the events surrounding the game.
Tara Sullivan of the Boston Globe dissected the dissolving relationship between Brady and Belichick that led to the quarterback leaving.
"There's no doubt, in the end, Brady had more in the tank than Belichick thought he had," Sullivan said.
"I think that's inarguable at this point. Especially if you go back through Belichick's decisions and going back to Jimmy Garoppolo maybe he thought he had his successor all the way back then. I just don't think he ever anticipated that Brady would actually be this good this late into his life."
Brady leads the NFL in touchdown passes after four games. He's 44 years old and his Buccaneers team has won three of their first four games.
"It's hard to argue that it wasn't the wrong decision from a personnel standpoint. I just don't understand how you can make that argument. But that being said I do think that across those final years as it became clearer that maybe Belichick wasn't going to make some of the personnel moves or things that Brady wanted, Brady...his body language, his frustration spilled over.
"In that last season in particular it was pretty clear that he needed to move on."
Sulivan says that the relationship became untenable by the end even without any major blow-ups to point to.
"He had to leave. It had gotten untenable between them. Not in any really bad, ugly public way but in the way that it does after 20 years. People get sick of each other and I think they got sick of each other."
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