Bill Belichick reveals his fondest memories with Tom Brady ahead of QB’s ceremonial return to Foxborough

When the Patriots open up the 2023 regular season with their Week 1 matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles, they’ll have a special guest in the stands. Tom Brady, the quarterback who led the franchise to its six Super Bowls and helped spearhead a two-decade run of dominance, will be honored by the team in his first trip back to Foxborough since announcing his retirement this offseason. 

Of course, there’s plenty of fanfare surrounding Brady’s return, and should be the first of many celebrations of his highly decorated career and impact on the franchise. Leading up to the festivities, Bill Belichick was asked to reflect a bit on his time with Brady and was asked by WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” if there were any specific moments that stand out above the rest.

“Well, there are six of them that come to mind,” Belichick began, referencing the six Super Bowl titles the two won together.

“Can’t say enough about Tom, what he’s meant to this organization, what he’s meant to me personally,” he continued, via WEEI.com. “He just epitomized everything that you would want in a player. His work ethic, his ability to handle and process a lot of things on and off the field. His critical play-making ability and instinctiveness and anticipation and decision-making at the most critical times in the biggest games in the team’s history, not to mention seasons.

“For so many years he just set a standard of daily performance, which turned into yearly performance, which turned into not only a Hall of Fame career but probably the best career of all time in the National Football League and he did it on a day-to-day basis. I’d say that was really the biggest thing about Tom that’s so impressive is what you got from him every day was that same level of commitment, work ethic, performance, attention to detail, and, you know, inquisitiveness and coachability.

“Tom was always looking to get better, and improve, and wanted to find ways to be a little bit better than he was, no matter how good he was, and that’s really a great, great attitude to have from a player and a person of his ability and performance and production.”

As you may expect, Brady effectively holds every meaningful record in Patriots franchise history and also retired as the league’s winningest quarterback while sitting atop every major passing category as well. Upon leaving the franchise in free agency in 2020, Brady signed with the Buccaneers and was able to immediately win his NFL-record seventh Super Bowl title. 

While there were plenty of rumblings of a strained relationship between Belichick and Brady as his tenure with New England came to a close, the two have spoken glowingly about one another more recently. Belichick appeared on the former quarterback’s podcast following his retirement announcement this winter and called him the “greatest player,” so it does seem like things have smoothed over quite nicely between these two NFL legends.