Tom Brady was not going to sign any contract for Bill Belichick, new documentary reveals

BOSTON -- Tom Brady left the New England Patriots. This happened in March of 2020. By now, you've surely caught up on that news.

Yet while it's not new news, it figures to remain a significant part of football and sports history, as retrospect tells us with certainty that Brady's free-agent departure marked the end of the Patriots' dynasty. As such, it will be dissected and analyzed and questioned for years and decades to come. (You'll recall that the chronicling of the end of Michael Jordan's run in Chicago captivated the nation in a documentary series that came out 22 years after the fact. This will be like that.)

And perhaps the most in-depth look to date at the why and the how of Brady's New England exit will begin to be released this Friday, in the new Apple TV+ docuseries, "The Dynasty." With the first two episodes set to debut on the streaming platform this week, some media members got an early look at the show.

Chad Graff of The Athletic wrote about the early look at the program, and he shared what will serve as the defining reason Brady left the Patriots after the 2019 season: He could no longer work for Bill Belichick.

"I wasn't going to sign up for more of it."  

During one of the 10 episodes, Brady was asked about why his Patriots career ended before his football career concluded.

"Me and Coach Belichick, we did what we loved and competed for 20 years together. But I wasn't going to sign another contract even if I wanted to play until 50," Brady said in the docuseries, per Graff's story. "Based on how things had gone, I wasn't going to sign up for more of it."

That much, many of us assumed. But it had never been stated so plainly.

While the specifics of what Brady sought in a contract -- largely believed to be two years and $50 million -- factored in to the messy end of the quarterback's run in New England, this admission from Brady removes any pretense or confusion about why he opted to enter free agency as a 43-year-old in 2020.

Again, we knew much of that. Brady brought an entire documentary crew of his own into the building in Foxboro during the 2017 season and postseason for his "Tom Vs. Time" documentary series, and it not-so-subtly served as a vehicle for Brady to put forth some of his complaints without having to say himself. Watching Brady and Alex Guerrero scramble to build a makeshift privacy wall in a stadium suite so the quarterback could get his pregame massage (after Guerrero had been banned from the team training room by Belichick) stated loudly and clearly how unsettled Brady was. Gisele Bundchen spoke directly to the camera during that series, saying, "He tells me 'I love it so much and I just want to go to work and feel appreciated and have fun.'"

The friction leaked out in some reports, and it was obvious in some respects. But Brady, of course, shrugged it off, stuck around to win another Super Bowl in 2018 (nbd), and played out his final season in 2019 knowing that he was heading elsewhere the following spring.

That end came, of course, after a 20-year working relationship between Brady and Belichick, a span that saw Brady rise from relative unknown to the greatest of all time. Surely Brady, a deep believer in "The Four Agreements" and a generally positive thinker, will always look back on that era of his life with fondness and appreciation for the coach who helped make it happen. But -- and let me say this loudly -- thank heavens that he was willing to be real for his interview in this new documentary. Thanks. Heavens.

While it does sound from Graff's write-up like the show leans on players' negative feelings towards Belichick ("hostile work environment" and "miserable atmosphere" were used as descriptors, and Wes Welker described Brady as an "abused dog" for continuing to play for Belichick for so long, Graff says), it's unlikely that Brady contributed too much in that regard. That's just not his nature. Not his public nature, anyway. It's fair to assume that the majority of the comments Brady makes in this series about his former head coach are appreciative and respectful.

Yet at the very least, Brady was willing to be as honest as possible when explaining why he left his only NFL home after 20 years in New England. In his mind, he could no longer work for Bill Belichick, and it was time to move on to something new. 

For Brady, who immediately won a Super Bowl and ended up adding 32 regular-season wins, 108 regular-season touchdowns, 14,643 more regular-season passing yards, five playoff wins, 15 playoff touchdowns and 2,012 playoff passing yards, it was clearly a great decision.

From a Patriots perspective, you could look at it one of two ways. On the one hand, the fact that the Brady-Belichick relationship was able to endure for so long and help generate unparalleled organizational success for two decades is something to marvel at and celebrate. On the other hand, given how far south things fell for the organization and for Belichick in the four seasons that followed Brady's departure, one could also suggest that more effort could have been made on the part of Robert Kraft and Belichick to fix what clearly was a fractured relationship with the most important player the organization has ever and will ever have wearing a Patriots uniform.