Tom Brady clears the air on his relationship with Bill Belichick

Maybe Tom Brady and Bill Belichick needed a few years apart to appreciate the relationship the two shared as quarterback and coach.

Brady is four months into his retirement (his second). And in a media stop this week, he talked about how much he appreciated his old coach. After all, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick won six Super Bowls together. Even if his voice makes your skin crawl and vice versa, there was at least a flicker of a relationship there.

“Were there times where you know it wasn’t always eye to eye?” Brady said of Belichick during an interview with ESPN. “Very few and far between, actually. I still envision our relationship as positive and always will.”

Tom Brady and Bill Belichick hoisted the Lombardi Trophy together in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017 and 2019. But he played his final game with the Patriots in the 2019 season. His last in a Patriots uniform was a wildcard loss to the Titans. Down by a point late in the game, Brady and the offense was at its own 1. The quarterback threw an interception, which turned into an easy pick six for the Titans. His final Patriots play wasn’t one he’d put on the highlight reel.

Still, the quarterback said his relationship with his head coach followed a simple rule.

“He very much trusted what I was out there doing in the field, and it went both ways,” Tom Brady said of Bill Belichick. “Ultimately our success was because so many people in the organization, as coach Belichick always said, ‘do your job,’ and I did as quarterback and leader. … I learned so much from him.”

Brady finished his NFL playing career with Tampa Bay. He led the Bucs to a Super Bowl win — his seventh ring — in February, 2021. In that game, Brady bested the Chiefs and out-dueled Patrick Mahomes.

When the confetti stopped falling and it all got quiet, Brady started checking his phone. He received so many congratulatory text messages. He said Belichick “was one of the first people to text me after we won the Super Bowl in Tampa.”

Earlier this year, Patriots owner Robert Kraft announced that the team would honor Brady in New England’s home opener. “It will be the beginning of many celebrations to honor Tom Brady and say thank you for what he did for us in 20 years playing for the New England Patriots,” Kraft said.

And we know that sometime before the game, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are going to blink back some tears and give each other a hug.