Tom Brady may have officially left the New England Patriots when free agency started this offseason, but a new report claims that his heart may have been gone much earlier.
There were months of rumors leading up to Brady’s signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that he was ready to bolt from New England, and a report from Boston Sports Journal’ s Greg Bedard claims that Brady was ready to leave starting with the team’s 2018 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The report claimed that Brady had grown increasingly dismayed at the team’s offensive gameplan, which he believed was phasing him out in favor of a run-based offense.
As Bedard wrote, the approach may have been the best fit for the personnel the Patriots had at the time — and helped them win a final Super Bowl for Brady before he left the team — but still didn’t go over too well with the future Hall of Famer.
“What you won’t hear from Team Brady is that Brady largely checked out in 2018 after the loss to Pittsburgh and hated how the offense pivoted to a more run-based attack,” Bedard wrote, via NESN . “Brady probably hated the Rams Super Bowl gameplan as well and how it only produced 13 points. Was Brady being phased out in ’18? Was the offense becoming less Tom-centric? Of course not. The Patriots were trying to win football games with what they had on hand. And it worked … so I guess we won’t hear any public complaints about that season.”
The Patriots lost the 2018 Week 15 game to the Pittsburgh Steelers by a score of 17-10, dropping the Patriots to 9-5 and putting a damper on the Super Bowl hopes that they had to start the season. Brady had a late interception in that game that allowed the Steelers to add to their lead and quashed any hopes of the Patriots winning. Brady and the team would bounce back, winning the last two games of the regular season before going on a Super Bowl-winning run in the playoffs.
Brady has said nothing publicly about tensions behind the scenes at New England, though many believe he may have hinted at it in a statement after joining the Buccaneers. In a piece for The Players Tribune , Brady wrote that he was excited to go to a team that “welcomed me as one of their own” and listened to what he had to say — which many took as a sign that his input no longer carried the same weight with the Patriots.