Five years ago Monday marked the official end of the Tom Brady Era in New England, as the future Hall of Fame quarterback posted to social media to inform the football world of his intentions to sign with the Buccaneers in free agency.
Brady went on to win a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay in his first season under center for the Bucs, while the Patriots went on to begin a five-year run of mediocrity that culminated in consecutive four-win seasons in 2023 and 2024.
So when NBC Sports Boston’s Tom E. Curran joined Jones & Keefe on Tuesday for his weekly appearance on the show, he was asked to reflect on the last five years of Patriots football post-Brady.
“They’re been disastrous,” said Curran. “And a lot of it traces to the decision to let him walk out the door. Because once that happened - and the reason Brady left was because the Patriots were holding the door open for him for years. And then by 2019, the summer of that year, when they didn’t give him a contract that he wanted [them] to, that pissed him off to an extent where, you know, he said, ‘Don’t franchise me. I’m not coming back. I want to be a free agent.’ [He] started playing footsies with the Dolphins.
“So you could tell, basically, that sealed it. But for Brady to be moved on from, with the express logic being, ‘We’ll be fine without him. We can replicate what he does. He’s the greatest player of all-time, but we’ll still be fine.’ [That] was whistling past the graveyard, and there’s no other way to avoid it. It was immense hubris and ego to think that he was just another guy. And they did think that. They 1000000% thought that. That’s why you’re giving him, at highest, $22.5 million against the cap - that was the offer that Bill [Belichick] made to him in the days before Brady made the announcement.
“Once Brady goes and wins the Super Bowl, that’s when all the guardrails went up. That Robert Kraft went through the pain of watching Brady go elsewhere, and had all the agitation of Bill and Tom and having to go through it. [He] sides with Bill, and then Brady wins a Super Bowl - that’s when all the guardrails went up. That’s when Bill started kicking at the reins that were placed on him, which he still complains about to this day.”
The departure of Brady is not the only thing Curran believes led to the Patriots falling to the bottom of the league over the last half-decade, saying that the organization punting on a real succession plan for offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels as he left for the Raiders’ head coaching job may have been the nail in the coffin.
Curran said, “Again, they say, ‘Well, what’s the worst that can happen? We’ll just put people in charge here that are smart football people. We’re really good at this job.’ And then you alienate the young quarterback, or you make him question what’s going on. And then you put him at the literal exile.
“So everything flowed from the Brady thing. Everything. And it was very much an ego situation, in my estimation.”
“I know it’s not one thing, but would it be Bill’s decision to have Patricia be the offensive coordinator that really sent this thing the most sideways, in your mind?” asked WEEI’s Rich Keefe. “Was there one thing that you think really kind of forced it to having to bottom out the way they have over the last two years?”
“Yes, it was the post-Josh plan [that] absolutely led to it, ” said Curran. “And, you know - I think Josh hoped to one day be the successor to Bill here. I think Josh would’ve liked to have stayed here and not having [had] to go to Las Vegas and be given an assurance that he would be the person to succeed. And if that had happened, for instance, would they have bottomed out that way?
“You know, would they have - if Josh stayed, would Mac Jones still be the starting quarterback, beginning to work on his second contract Would the team have been able to maintain - I mean, they’d probably still be in at least the Dolphins situation where they’re paying too much money to a guy who’s not that great at the quarterback position. But what else would they have been able to do? So it’s fascinating to think about. But that was the No. 1 thing, was the notion that, ‘Eh, we’ll be fine. What’s the worst that could happen? We don’t even have to name a play caller all the way through the summer, how’s that?’”
Since Brady’s departure from New England, the franchise has a regular season record of 33-51, with one playoff appearance in 2021. They went one-and-done that postseason, getting eviscerated in Buffalo 47-17. They eventually “mutually parted ways” with Belichick after the four-win 2023 season, and followed that up with an even more embarrassing four-win effort under first-time head coach Jerod Mayo in the 2024 season. Less than a year after showing Belichick the door, Mayo was shown the same.
New England will be fielding its third head coach in three years with Mike Vrabel in 2025, and have since brought McDaniels back for a third stint as the organization’s offensive coordinator. They have a potential face of the franchise at quarterback in 22-year-old Drake Maye, and an All-Pro 22-year-old cornerback in Christian Gonzalez.
They just spent record-money on the top-defensive tackle free agent on the market in Milton Williams, along with a bevy of additional cash to help bolster their swiss cheese defense from last season. And with the No. 4 pick in-hand for April’s NFL Draft, the team will look to add its third consecutive first round stud as the rebuild continues at 1 Patriot Place.
So while eight wins in two seasons is the exact definition of bottoming out, it could be the early stages of the next great era of Patriots football ahead.
Is it fair to expect them to reach the heights of Brady and Belichick? Absolutely not. No one will ever do that again.
But can they be 10% as successful? 25%?
We’ll begin to answer that question when Week 1 kicks off for New England in 173 days.