The New England Patriots are a dynasty, as the team has been on an extended stretch of dominance that puts it in historically great company. However, in the last year or so, major cracks have started to appear in the longtime relationship between Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and Robert Kraft. While New England made it to the Super Bowl last February, reports have indicated that the relationships that have made the franchise so good for so long are fraying just a bit.
Those rumblings are now back, and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with New England’s 31-20 loss to Jacksonville earlier this week. According to a new book by ESPN’s Ian O’Connor about Belichick, someone familiar with the situation believes Brady would part ways with the only head coach for whom he’s played if he could.
“If you’re married 18 years to a grouchy person who gets under your skin and never compliments you, after a while you want to divorce him,” a source told O’Connor in the upcoming Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time.
O’Connor spoke to this person following the 2017 season, and reported that they went as far as to say “Tom knows Bill is the best coach in the league, but he’s had enough of him. If Tom could, I think he would divorce him.”
The Patriots have always presented a unified front whenever adversity has popped up, so while this seems different from “we were filming some stuff” or “some footballs got deflated,” it would be a gigantic surprise if Brady or Belichick said something that confirms this report outside of a silly comment about how every relationship that occurs over two decades has its ups and downs. Still, for the NFL’s model of consistency in recent years, it is fascinating to see that something like this could end up being the demise of the Patriots franchise.
(Via ESPN)
