Tom Brady will regret not staying with the Patriots

Tom Brady won’t finish his career with the New England Patriots, but is he making a mistake leaving the only team he’s ever known?

When a skinny kid from Michigan walked into New England Patriots camp for the first time in the summer of 2000, few could’ve imagined what the next 20 years would hold.

Tom Brady went from being that kid, the 199th-overall pick in the draft and behind not only Drew Bledsoe but also Michael Bishop on the depth chart, to being a football legend. Six Super Bowl titles later, though, the Brady era in New England will end at 4 p.m. EST on Wednesday when he officially hits free agency.

Brady is leaving New England not only as the holder of every single passing record in franchise history but also as the quarterback who turned the Patriots into the greatest dynasty the sport has ever seen.

They’ve won 10 or more games in 17 straight years, the longest streak in NFL history. They reached the AFC Championship every year from 2011-18, another record. And they’ve appeared in nine Super Bowls since 2001; no other franchise has more than three trips to the Super Bowl in that span.

Brady’s legacy will now conclude elsewhere, an imperfect ending to what has been a perfect career. There are questions about why now, at the age of 42, would he leave the Patriots. Was his relationship with head coach Bill Belichick strained? Belichick did ban his trainer Alex Guerrero from the locker room. But Brady has never spoken publicly about any tension between him and Belichick. Belichick, of course, never reveals anything.

Did New England do enough to build a team around him? They did use their first-round pick in the 2019 draft on a wide receiver, N’Keal Harry, whom Brady speaks highly of. And they made a deal for Mohamed Sanu at the trade deadline. But the rest of the Patriots receiving corps was a patchwork, especially at tight end where they never found a replacement for the retired Rob Gronkowski.

The Patriots front office did give him the league’s best defense, one that led the NFL in fewest points allowed in 2019 and didn’t give up more than 14 points through the first eight games of the season. The unit still has the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in cornerback Stephon Gilmore and was enough to guide a sometimes middling offense to another division title and 29 seconds away from a bye in the playoffs.

It was the relationship that Brady built with the community and their fans that he will miss the most. They celebrated moments together for two decades and also suffered heartbreak (yes, even Brady and the Patriots lose sometimes).

“I have been so blessed to share them with you all,” Brady wrote in a statement released on social media on Tuesday. “I tried to represent us always in the best and most honorable way, and I fought hard with my teammates to help bring victory and triumph even in the most dire situations. You opened your heart to me, and I opened my heart to you. And Pats Nation will always be a part of me.”

The sight of Brady in another jersey will be a hard one for Patriots fans to take. Like Johnny Unitas in Chargers gear, Joe Namath playing for the Rams, or Joe Montana playing quarterback for the Chiefs, it will be a jarring moment.

Wherever he plays in 2020, Brady will always be remembered as a Patriot and could always return there when he’s ready to retire.

For 20 years, Patriots fans got to have him to themselves. Now they have to share him, wondering why he couldn’t have finished his career only playing for the Patriots. It’s a decision Brady may come to regret.

He no longer belongs solely to Pats Nation.