While the New England Patriots (2-4) continue to struggle this season – they’ve lost three straight games and trail the Miami Dolphins (3-3) and Buffalo Bills (5-2) in the AFC East – Tom Brady is living the dream.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5-2) are atop the NFC South – some say they’re the best team in the conference – and his stacked offense just got even more stacked with the addition of Antonio Brown.
Given how well things are going for Brady, you have to wonder if he wishes he had left New England sooner.
Author and journalist Gary Myers, who is also the host of The GOAT: Tom Brady podcast, offered his perspective Thursday on CBS Sports Radio.
“I think he stayed there as long as he did – even though he wasn’t getting market value on his contract – because he thought that he could still win and win Super Bowls there,” Myers said on Tiki & Tierney. “Not just win, but win Super Bowls. And I think that the last couple years, that confidence had started to dissipate because he saw what was happening with the roster.”
Brady led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls and won six of them. Last year, however, they lost five of their last nine games, including a Wild Card loss to Tennessee in Foxborough.
In many ways, it was stunning to see Brady leave New England this past offseason. In other ways, well, perhaps not as much.
“Here’s the thing: if he had to do it over again and he knew there was life away from New England and maybe the grass was actually greener, he might have done it earlier in his career,” Myers said. “It’s one thing to win; it’s another thing to win and have fun at it. He was never joyful.”
The Patriots started 8-0 last season. Brady called himself “the most miserable 8-0 quarterback in the NFL.”
“That says everything you really need to know there,” Myers said. “For him to pick up at the age of 43 with two kids at home – and he has his third child who’s with him a lot – I’m telling you he lived right next door to Robert Kraft in Brookline. For him, it was like living next door to his second father. It really took a lot for him to give up everything he had built. To be a Boston hero like Larry Bird and Bill Russell and Bobby Orr and Ted Williams and then just picking up and [saying], ‘I’m going to finish somewhere else,’ that just shows really how unhappy he was in New England.”