These Joe Montana quotes add some more context to end of Tom Brady's Patriots career

BOSTON -- Tom Brady retired last week. This week, he had Bill Belichick as a guest on his podcast. Anyone seeking some closure in the saga of Brady's Patriots career ending in 2020 could find some in that conversation.

As a result of all of that, there's been plenty of nostalgic looks at Brady's career in New England. But some recent comments from Joe Montana may actually work to provide some more interesting perspective on what the end of Brady's New England career really felt like.

The quotes come from a dynamite profile written by Wright Thompson for ESPN.com. The story is about Joe Montana. It's not about Tom Brady. But it's also not not about Tom Brady.

The story noted that Montana and Brady have been friendly to each other, even if they aren't quite friends. It also revealed that Montana has spent several Super Bowl Sundays rooting against Brady, with friends of Montana saying "he'd be happy if Patrick Mahomes won eight titles."

Yet the relevant comments in relation to Brady came when Montana was reflecting upon the end of his career in San Francisco.

Montana, a four-time Super Bowl champion, suffered an elbow injury in the 1990 NFC Championship Game, which the 49ers lost by two points to the Giants. That injury kept him off the field and away from the team in 1991, leading to Steve Young seizing the No. 1 quarterback role, which then led to Montana getting traded to Kansas City. Montana played the final two seasons of his career for the Chiefs.

Even now, more than 30 years later, it all does not sit well with Montana.

"I struggle to try to understand how the whole process took place with me leaving San Francisco," Montana told Thompson. "I should have never had to leave."

Montana took the Chiefs to the AFC title game in his first season there, and they lost their lone playoff game in 1994. But the inability to add to his legacy in San Francisco still leaves him with what appears to be a certain level of emptiness. At the very least, he's still hurt by the 49ers deciding that they no longer wanted him around.

"Why wasn't I allowed to compete for the job? I just had one of the best years I'd ever had. I could understand if I wasn't playing well. We had just won two Super Bowls and I had one of my best years and we were winning in the championship game when I got hurt," Montana lamented. "How do I not get an opportunity? That's the hardest part."  

Montana sounded like a wounded man when recalling the year he spent rehabbing away from the team.

"Why am I not allowed in the facility? What did I do to not be allowed in the facility?" Montana rhetorically asked Thompson. "They wouldn't even let me dress."

Considering Brady left New England and immediately won a Super Bowl with the Buccaneers, his journey doesn't exactly mirror Montana's. But there's still a couple of very comparable aspects. For one, Brady openly campaigned for a contract that would keep him in New England, all while expressing a firm desire to play until the age of 45. The team wasn't interested. As a result, Brady's quest to win more championships in New England with Belichick was cut short prematurely.

"Inside I think [former 49ers head coach George Seifert] knows. You guys won another Super Bowl, but you probably would have two or three more if I'd stuck around," Montana said.

Steve Young, whose presence obviously led to the departure of Montana from San Francisco, added some insight into the feelings that the greatest athletes feel after their careers come to an end.

"Every player in history wants to write more in the book. I think about that all the time," Young told Thompson. "No matter how much you write, you want to write more."

Yound added: "The day you retire you fall of a cliff. You land in a big pile of nothing. It's a wreck. But it's more of a wreck for people who have the biggest book."

Again, the story wasn't specifically about Brady. But the topic of Brady was unavoidable. 

Brady believes in The Four Agreements and is able to be cordial even to people like Roger Goodell, who invested tremendous energy, time, and resources into tearing Brady down. So it's hardly surprising or revelatory that he's able to spend time with Bill Belichick and share all of the reasons he respects the head coach. That's Brady's public persona, and there's more than enough genuine background for him to draw on in such a conversation. Plenty of it is genuine.

But in the larger picture, and behind closed doors, Brady likely will always harbor certain feelings of pain and torment for being unable to finish the book that he had spent 20 years writing in New England. Even if he's not quite there yet, the reflections of the Hall of Fame QBs he grew up watching in the Bay Area do help show that unresolved endings sometimes just stay ... unresolved.