THE TRAGEDY OF BRADY VS. BELICHICK: SO MUCH GLORY, SO LITTLE JOY

It was inevitable, and appropriate, that a scandalous reign would end in the divorce of control freaks who couldn’t enjoy their collective greatness — and make no mistake, Brady has won the grudge war

     From the first time Tom Brady shot a stink-eyed, F-off glare at the grump in the hoodie, you knew he’d leave Bill Belichick. That doesn’t mean we can’t continue to examine why, wondering how two men who created so much glory — the most decorated championship run in the history of America’s signature sport — could dominate the NFL for two decades yet kill off each other in the acidic end.

     Sure enough, as expected from a scandalous dynasty tarnished by Spygate and Deflategate and Aaron Hernandez and who knows what else, accusational mud is flying in the days before they collide for the first time as opponents. It’s mostly from Camp Brady, which gleefully offered details — true, or just sort of — to author Seth Wickersham for a new book about the New England dynasty, “It’s Better to be Feared.’’ To read the excerpts, their relationship had rotted to the point Belichick refused to meet in person with Brady when he fled the Patriots to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, choosing to say goodbye over the phone.

     Typically, Belichick opted for an amnesiac response Wednesday, choosing to remember love and kisses in a bond gone bad. Of their relationship, he said, “Yeah, I think it’s good. It’s always been good,’’ claiming that the goodbye-on-the-phone story wasn’t true. “There are a few things about this book; it sounds like it's a lot of second-, third- and fourth-hand comments. I'm not going to get into that. I'm going to focus on this game and try to prepare for the Bucs."

     There also are passages, via another unnamed indirect source, that owner Bob Kraft was equally as sick of Belichick. Leaving a leadership conference in Aspen, Kraft is said to have told friends in the hotel lobby before heading to see the Patriots play: “I hate leaving here. You leave here and you leave some of the most brilliant people you've ever met. You pick up so much knowledge from all these brilliant minds. And I have to go to Detroit to be with the biggest f---ing asshole in my life — my head coach.’’ Kraft thought of Belichick as “an idiot savant’’ and was prepared after the 2017 season to side with Brady in the cold war and bring in Bill O’Brien, the Houston Texans coach and former Patriots assistant, as the new head coach.

     So, why not execute the plan? Because Kraft didn’t have the guts to fire Belichick, who would have one more Super Bowl title up his cut-off sleeves, despite reports that Black players protested his friendship with then-President Trump and his confrontation with the wife of his former assistant, Eric Mangini, who had leaked Spygate details to the NFL office when he was head coach of the New York Jets. The sixth championship, over the Los Angeles Rams, bought Belichick time. Brady was long out of patience by then, meaning The Grump had won the battle of Foxboro, even if Brady went on to win another Super Bowl last February.

     There is an air of bewilderment and melancholy to it all, a chilling commentary on humanity and why shared magnificence isn’t enough to keep sporting titans together. This shouldn’t even be happening Sunday night, Brady’s return to Gillette Stadium in the still-bizarro colors of his new team, having settled the loudest tavern debate in sports with his seventh title in Tampa: Who was more responsible for the six-ring reign of the Patriots, the quarterback or coach?

     It was the quarterback, we’ve now come to realize, after engineering a culture flush and instant Vince Lombardi Trophy with a traditional NFL stumblebum featuring a pirate ship in its end zone. “Damn right,’’ said Brady’s father, Tom Sr. “Belichick wanted him out, and last year he threw 56 touchdowns (actually, 50). I think that’s a pretty good year.’’

     If life made sense, they’d have stayed together and kept trying to win more until they retired together. But like Lennon and McCartney, Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls management and, I suppose, Mark Zuckerberg and the dude he cut out of the company, Tom and Bill were just another contemporary power couple doomed to split. If blame can be assessed, well, once Brady won another title with a more carefree spirit, Bucs coach Bruce Arians, it’s obvious an abrupt break from Belichick was enough to push Brady into unprecedented success territory. Now, he is described in a supernatural context, as if he’s a cyborg or monk, daring to extend his mastery of sport’s most important and scrutinized position to his 45th year on Earth. Was it me, or was he looking a bit drawn and thin last weekend during a loss to the Rams?

     Consider it a reminder that he is human. “I feel like I’m coming back to life in a certain way,’’ Brady told the Wall Street Journal, in his most revealing comment yet about Life After Belichick.

     The operative narrative, as we await the unimaginable scene of Brady entering Gillette as the enemy, is how Belichick and Kraft ever allowed the breakup to happen after 20 seasons. If any outcome should be protected as sacred, it’s Tom Brady retiring as a Patriot. But the same was said about Jordan in Chicago, and as one who was in the middle of that muck, I detect similarities. Like Jordan, Brady was tugging for more control. Like the Jerrys — Reinsdorf and Krause — Belichick was unyielding and clashed with Brady’s personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, rather than cooperate with him in the name of appeasing the G.O.A.T. until retirement.

     “It’s definitely gonna be weird,” said ex-Patriots star Julian Edelman, part of three title teams. “It’s like going to a family barbecue … and like you’re the stepkid or you’re like the kid who has divorced parents and your mom and dad are there and you don’t know how to react.”

     Predictably, Belichick is employing revisionist history this week, claiming he wanted Brady to return, words he never uttered publicly as the free-agent drama bubbled in the spring of 2020. “I think we've been through all the dynamics of that. There were a lot of things there," Belichick said. “He looked at his options and made his decision. We weren't as good an option as Tampa. You'd have to ask him about that, but it wasn't a question about not wanting him, that's for sure.

     “I'm not going to go back and rehash all that. We've talked about that. Really my focus is on the game here. Look, I have so much respect and appreciation for Tom and everything he did here, and for me and for our team. We're just getting ready to compete against Tampa this week and we're going to keep our focus on that." Tom and I had, I feel, like a good relationship and a lot of production obviously while we were together. I enjoyed coaching Tom, and he was a great player for us."

     Rather than call b.s., Brady remains conciliatory. After all, he’s the one with seven rings, one more than Belichick. “Twenty years of being there, and obviously he’s a great mentor for me,” he said on his weekly radio show. “Yes, there’s definitely great lessons I’ve learned from him and he’s a great football coach and he does a great job for his team. Any player, I would just hope that their coach gives them everything they’ve got. I’m sure every coach wants every player to give them everything they’ve got. I think that’s what makes a great relationship.”

     But as the curator and guardian of his burgeoning empire, including his TB12 health and wellness brand, Brady is savvy enough to let his confidants serve as his public spokesmen. So it was no surprise to see Brady Sr. — days before a mega-event that NBC is hyping as The Return, with a promo featuring Adele’s haunting lyric, “Hello from the other side. At least I can say that I’ve tried’’ — speak bitterly of Belichick on a Boston-based podcast.

     “Tommy is extraordinarily appreciative of everything that happened during his New England career, and he’s more than happy that he’s moved on because it was pretty obvious that the Patriot regime felt that it was time for him to move on,’’ he said. “And frankly, it may well have been perfect for Belichick to move on from him. On the other hand, I think the Tampa Bay Bucs are pretty happy that the decision was made in Foxboro that they didn’t want to afford him or didn’t want to keep him when his last contract came up. (It will be) very nostalgic. That was our home for 20 years. The fans embraced Tommy, the city embraced Tommy, and the team embraced Tommy for a while.’’

     Also piling on was Guerrero, who said Belichick “never evolved’’ in his relationship with Brady. “It was like Bill never really ... I think his emotions or feelings never evolved with age," Guerrero told the Boston Herald. "As Tom got into his late 30s or early 40s, I think Bill was still trying to treat him like that 20-year-old kid he drafted. And all the players, I think, realized Tom was different. He's older, so he should be treated differently. And all the players, none of them would have cared that he was treated differently. I think that was such a Bill thing. So you can't treat someone who's in his 40s like they're 20. It doesn't work."

     Playing the role of ambassador, not wanting to disrupt an intense week of preparation, Brady sheepishly scolded his father. “I’ve actually prepared a statement that I wanted to say, and it's really all that I have to say on the subject," Brady said. “Comments made by Thomas Edward Brady, a 77-year-old insurance company CEO who should know better at this point in his life, doesn't necessarily reflect the views or positions held by his son, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr., so furthermore should Tom Sr. continue to speak out on behalf of his son without the express written consent on Jr. reserves the right to eventually put him in a home against his will. That's all I have to say."

     But Brady doesn’t have to echo their comments to be on board with them. Enough of the charade that this was some Gwyneth Paltrow-like conscious uncoupling. Belichick wanted to move on, gambled Brady was too old — and karma has burned him, leaving him out of the postseason last winter and with a new quarterback, rookie Mac Jones, who has been compared favorably to Brady only by those who believe in UFOs. How would you like to be Jones, inheriting the G.O.A.T.’s job, walking onto the G.O.A.T.’s field, hearing 72,000 New Englanders chanting the G.O.A.T.’s name yet also expecting the kid to beat the G.O.A.T. And if he sucks, Mac will be knifed by the home fans, even as Belichick tries to calm the waters by practicing diplomacy and voicing reverence toward Brady in every press conference, including his belief that he can play until he’s age 50.

     “Nothing Tom does surprises me. He's a great player, works hard, takes care of himself. He's talked about playing until 50. If anybody can do it, he probably can,’’ Belichick said. “Tom has had an unbelievable career. There's not enough superlatives and adjectives to compliment him on everything that he's achieved and continues to achieve. It's unbelievably impressive.’’

     Noting that Brady will break the NFL career passing yardage record, with just 68 yards Sunday, Belichick said: “He's done more than any other player at that position in whatever measurement you want to take — whether it's yards, completions, touchdowns, championships, you name it. Put anything out there that you want; it doesn't get any tougher than that."

     Of course, this will be a Brady love-in, all night long, as it should be. For the record, he expects the fans to root for their team, not for him. In that sense, it will be a local referendum on Belichick, who doesn’t want to be reduced to a legacy as the villain who ran off Brady when, in truth and fairness, he’s the only NFL coach to win six Super Bowls.

     “I think they are there to root for their team. I wouldn’t expect that — a homecoming,” Brady said. “Their team is the Patriots. I certainly have had a lot of people cheer for me over the years. So there will be a lot of excitement from them in the stands. I think the home crowd at Gillette is a great crowd and I think they’re going to cheer for their team, as I would expect them to.”

     But he also wants them to go home unhappy. “I’m not going to necessarily reminisce. I don't think this is the moment for that,’’ he said. “I’ll have plenty opportunities to reminisce about my football career — none of which I really care to do right now because I'm so much in the moment. I'm not going to be thinking about 20 years of history. I'm going to be thinking about one night of football, a Sunday night game coming off a really tough loss.

     “I think if (the fans) know anything about me, they're gonna know that I'm going out there to try to win the football game, so I think they'll respect that about me. One thing I learned from the Patriots — Belichick would say, 'Listen, if you love football, then, 8:30 on Sunday night at Gillette Stadium is the place to be.’ ’’

     Except when Tom Brady is in pewter, TB12 from Tompa Bay, trying to win his eighth Super Bowl when the Patriots will be fortunate to reach the AFC playoffs. It reminds me of the day Jordan returned to Chicago with the Washington Wizards, when general manager Jerry Krause ordered famed public-address announcer Ray Clay to refrain from his trademark MJ intro — “From North Carolina …’’ — and Clay wound up losing his gig after I ripped the Bulls in my Sun-Times column. The fans roared, just as they’ll roar for Brady.

     And most likely, they’ll walk away quietly, asking why it had to end this way, how two all-time sporting greats ever got here, at this sad and unforgivable juncture in a disjointed journey more consumed by ego and oneupmanship than joy.

     Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he has gravitated by osmosis to film projects.