Almost all of New England stood still on St. Patrick's Day 2020 when Tom Brady took to social media to announce that he was leaving the Patriots to become a free agent. The next chapter of the best quarterback of all time's career took him to Tampa Bay, where he led the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl championship in his first year with the team.
Ominous signs were pointing towards Brady leaving New England as the 2019 season wore on, and the Patriots' Wild Card playoff loss to Mike Vrabel and the Tennessee Titans gave fans a sense that a breakup was coming.
But perhaps what most don't know is that Brady's departure was looming well before the Super Bowl LIII championship banner was unveiled at Gillette Stadium to start that final season.
Tom Brady made it obvious that he planned to leave the Patriots long before departure announcement
While some tend to believe that Bill Belichick not giving Brady any weapons outside of Julian Edelman to work with in 2019 - we all know how the Antonio Brown experiment turned out - was the straw that broke the GOAT's back.
But Brady recently revealed on Cris Collinsworth's Pro Football Focus podcast that he put his house on the market in September of 2019, a hint that the quarterback was going to explore free agency after the season. In fact, he had already done his homework on the Buccaneers.
“Well, I knew that I wasn’t going to come back to the team at the end of that year. I literally put my house for sale. There were a lot of conversations that I had over the previous couple of years that I knew it was time for me to continue my football journey somewhere else.”
The fortunes of the Patriots have changed mightily since then. The team has only made the playoffs once, has gone 8-26 over the last two seasons but hopes are high New England finally has its next franchise quarterback in Drake Maye. The Patriots' rookie class is being regarded as one of the best the organization has had in a while.
Rumors of a messy divorce between Brady and Belichick spread like wildfire, that wasn't the case. The fact of the matter is, Brady was ready to see what else was out there, and the roster the Buccaneers had at the time was miles better than that of the Patriots.
"There was no animosity. In fact, I was, it’s, it’s very emotional leaving because it’s kind of like telling, you know, your dad, I’m going away to college somewhere else. I’m leaving to go on a different journey. And it was just the right moment for me."
The Patriots have welcomed Brady back with open arms on two occasions in retiring his number in 2023 and unveiling a statue before the team's preseason opener against the Commanders in August. He is a Patriot for life, but that sudden career change may have given Brady some perspective.