Ex-NFL QB Explains Potential Appeal For Tom Brady To Leave Patriots

Could Tom Brady’s ultra competitiveness be what drives him out of New England?

Dan Orlovsky doesn’t seem to be ruling out.

Brady effectively will have his pick of the litter when NFL free agency opens next month. Despite an expected long list of suitors, many have wondered why Brady would leave the Patriots. After all, he’s amassed an unprecedented level of success in Foxboro, and you can’t put a price tag on the institutional knowledge and level of comfort he’s built in New England over the past two decades.

Orlovsky, however, argues Brady has nothing left to accomplish with the Patriots, and a championship triumph elsewhere could put the 42-year-old in an entirely separate stratosphere of sports lore.

“I think it all comes down to, ‘Who can I win a Super Bowl with?’ But I think with Brady, why go back to New England? To win a seventh?” Orlovsky said Thursday on ESPN’s “Get Up.” “Like, I think if Tom Brady goes somewhere else and wins a Super Bowl somewhere else, he leaves the conversation of greatest quarterback or greatest football (player) ever and enters the conversation of greatest athlete ever and he goes and does something Michael Jordan couldn’t do. Jordan won six with the Bulls, he didn’t win any with the Wizards. Can you go win a Super Bowl somewhere else other than New England?”

Perhaps Brady already is bracing for life after the Patriots. Orlovsky’s colleague, league insider Jeff Darlington, “would be stunned” if the six-time Super Bowl champion returns to New England.