Tom Brady’s video with Julian Edelman hits different knowing he was never coming back
By Josh Hill
Tom Brady told Howard Stern when he knew he was going to leave the Patriots, and it was long before free agency.
Tom Brady was never going to come back to the New England Patriots.
When it was announced that the six-time Super Bowl champion was going to hit NFL free agency this offseason, no one actually believed he was going to leave. But as much as we rejected the notion of Brady leaving the Patriots, Brady knew well before free agency that he wasn’t going to come back.
In fact, Brady told Howard Stern that he knew his Patriots career was over before he took the first snap of the 2019 season.
“I don’t think there was a final, final decision until it happened, but I would say I probably knew before the start of last season,” Brady said. “I knew it was just our time, our time was coming to an end.”
That’s a pretty devastating blow for fans who tried to convince themselves Brady would return not knowing his mind had been made up well before. It also makes his video with Julian Edelman that we dissected even more heartbreaking.
When video surfaced of Edelman mouthing ‘he’s coming back’ while sitting next Brady at a college basketball game, the internet dove into it like the Zapruder film to determine if Brady had actually responded with ‘no, he’s not’.
https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1233901150207959042
Knowing now that Brady had made up his mind in September, this just serves as an extra twist of the knife for Patriots fans.