ESPN has more juicy details on the reported rift between New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady from Ian O’Connor’s upcoming book, “Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time.”
So, in other words, the storyline Patriots fans desperately wanted to go away all offseason just got new life breathed into it.
“If you’re married 18 years to a grouchy person who gets under your skin and never compliments you, after a while you want to divorce him,” a source told O’Connor after the 2017 season.
“Tom knows Bill is the best coach in the league, but he’s had enough of him. If Tom could, I think he would divorce him.”
O’Connor reports Brady wasn’t sure he would return to the Patriots as recently as late March.
“But in the end, even if he wanted to, Brady could not walk away from the game, and he could not ask for a trade,” O’Connor wrote. “The moment Belichick moved (Jimmy) Garoppolo to San Francisco, and banked on Brady’s oft-stated desire to play at least into his mid-forties, was the moment Brady was virtually locked into suiting up next season and beyond. Had he retired or requested a trade, he would have risked turning an adoring New England public into an angry mob.”
ESPN’s summary of O’Connor’s book also includes details on Deflategate, Spygate and more.
Brady and Belichick have had nothing but positive things to say each other publicly of late.
“I have a good relationship with Tom,” Belichick said last month. “I have a lot of respect for Tom. We’ve won a lot of games together and I hope we can win some more together. I know he feels the same way.”
“I think our priorities are the same as they have always been,” Brady said last month. “I think that is why we get along so well. We’re here to win, and like I said, it has been a very professional environment that he has created. I think I am very lucky to be in that environment.
“I think he is the best coach that has ever coached in the NFL and I feel very privileged to have been mentored by him for as long as I have. Not many players have been able to be coached by the greatest coach of all time, and I have. I think I am very lucky to be able to have had that.”
Brady’s body coach and business partner Alex Guerrero even was permitted to return flying on team planes this season.
