Tom Brady Lifted the Patriots. Now Comes a Second Act.

In a statement issued by the Patriots, Belichick called Brady “the greatest quarterback of all time.”

“Tom was not just a player who bought into our program — he was one of its original creators,” Belichick said.

The coach continued: “Tom and I will always have a great relationship built on love, admiration, respect and appreciation. Nothing about the end of Tom’s Patriots career changes how unfathomably spectacular it was.”

Brady’s career always seemed laced by a bit of folklore. In interviews years after he left the University of Michigan, he described how he ran from his California home crying as he watched the 2000 N.F.L. draft unfold on television, crestfallen that he was passed over in all the top rounds of the event. (Ultimately, he was taken in the sixth, or second-to-last, round.) And just as dramatically, there is a perhaps apocryphal story often told by Kraft that Brady, carrying a pizza box, had a chance meeting with Kraft in the parking lot of the team’s home stadium after a preseason practice in 2000.

Brady, Kraft said, told the owner, “I’m the best decision this organization has ever made.”

It was a presumptuous remark, but in the end, not inaccurate.

The Patriots at the time had never won an N.F.L. championship and played in Foxborough, Mass., a remote, sleepy town roughly an hour from Boston. Practically an afterthought in pro football, the Patriots gave Brady his chance to start at quarterback only because of an injury to the team’s star.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/sports/football/tom-brady-patriots.html