All the world’s a stage, and in Foxboro, we’re about to see a drama play out that would make Billy Shakes proud.
The New England Patriots, you might have heard, are at a crossroads not seen by the six-time Super Bowl champions since Mo Lewis busted Drew Bledsoe’s spleen in 2001.
The Patriots’ Foxboro flop isn’t even a week old, and we’re already knee-deep in offseason speculation about the future of the Patriots. More specifically, quarterback Tom Brady’s uncertain contract situation — his ability to finally test free agency — looms over everything even tangentially related to the Patriots between now and the start of free agency in mid-March.
And while there are still two whole months before anything can actually happen — save for the Patriots and Brady agreeing to an extension — the jockeying for power has already begun.
Basically, we’re here:
In fact, it’s really been going on for years. Who can forget Bill Belichick mentioning Brady’s age and contract situation when New England drafted Jimmy Garoppolo all the way back in 2014? Then there was the ESPN story about the supposed internal struggle for power among the holy trinity, which ultimately ended with the Garoppolo trade to San Francisco.
But this thing has continued to simmer, whether it was Brady’s comments in his “Tom Vs. Time” documentary series, his absences from offseason workouts or his apparent insistence on having the ability to test the market this spring. Then Brady put his house on the market. As did his business partner, Alex Guerrero. And now with Brady staring down the barrel of free agency, all the involved parties seem to be scrambling to put themselves in the best possible position to win a high-stakes triple-threat match.
That really is the big takeaway from Brady’s well-crafted, well-thought-out social-media post in which he “officially” confirmed what he’s been saying for years now: He intends to keep playing football. No duh. His desire to play until his mid-40s has been stated ad nauseam. We get it.
There’s probably a reason, however, that Brady’s post wasn’t a simple, to-the-point “I’m back” type of thing. He might also be trying to make his point, and take any sort of leverage away from Belichick and/or Kraft.
“I have been blessed to find a career I love, teammates who go to battle with me, an organization that believes in me, and fans who have been behind us every step of the way,” Brady wrote in the lengthy caption.
“An organization that believes in me,” sure stands out, doesn’t it? If the Patriots don’t commit to Brady with a new contract, he can turn around and claim they no longer believe in him. If they did, they’d pay him to keep him in Foxboro, right? Then again, it’s also kind of weird for him to not once mention “Patriots” or “New England,” instead referring to the team as “every one of us that works at Gillette Stadium.” Weird.
Anyway. That’s where we’re left now, trying to decipher social-media posts, searching for hidden meaning and messages.
Brady isn’t alone, though, of course. Kraft and Belichick both are mobilizing, too.
“Before the season started, it was very important to Tom that he be free to do whatever he wanted at the end of the year,” Kraft told Peter King over the weekend.
Or, put another way, “Tom wanted this — not me.”
Kraft would add: “And you know, my hope and prayer is No. 1, he play for the Patriots. Or No. 2, he retires. He has the freedom to decide what he wants to do and what’s in his own best personal interest.”
If Brady ends up doing the previously unthinkable and signs elsewhere, Kraft can say “I wanted him to come back,” while throwing up his hands and pointing to Brady’s “personal interest.”
The Belichick dynamic looms, too. His job is to build a football team that contends for Super Bowls every year. He has to consider everything, and quite frankly, it’s actually pretty easy to see why he might be apprehensive about giving a soon-to-be 43-year-old Brady, despite his unreal resume, something like $50 million over the next two years, especially when Belichick has to find a way to potentially rebuild his coaching staff, add “weapons” to the offense and work on retooling a suddenly aging defense.
“But any decision that’s made,” Belichick said Sunday, “is — it’s not an individual decision. There are other people involved, so there has to be some type of communication and understanding, agreement, whatever you want to call it. That’s not a one-way street. … One person can’t decide what everybody else is going to do when players aren’t under contract, and we have a lot of players who aren’t under contract.”
Brady wants his demands — presumably in the form of a contract and a better supporting cast — met. Kraft wants Brady under center, or better yet, he just can’t stomach the idea of Dean Spanos or Jim Irsay benefiting from Brady running their team’s offense. Belichick, meanwhile, is trying to do “what’s best for the football team” in 2020 and beyond, as he chases Don Shula’s all-time win record.
Oh, and by the way, it certainly feels like no one wants to be the one responsible for the demise of the greatest dynasty in modern sports history. If there’s going to be a break-up, it’s no surprise these three all already are trying to win it.
It’s not a one-way street. It’s not even a two-way street. Patriot Place might as well be some sort of three-way street that will host the culmination of this drawn-out, high-stakes game of chicken among three of the biggest figures the sport of football has ever seen.
