New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has revealed the conversation he had with Tom Brady that would lead to the quarterback’s eventual exit.

Brady spent 20 years with the Patriots after being drafted in the year 2000 with the 199th overall pick. The quarterback would go on to win six Super Bowls in Foxborough and be regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the NFL.

The 46-year-old left the Patriots at the end of the 2019 season after guiding the team to the Wild Card round of the play-offs in his final year. Brady would then go on to sign for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a free agent and win one Super Bowl during his three years in Florida.

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Brady officially retired from the NFL in February following a 23-year career in the league that saw him win seven Super Bowl rings and three MVP awards. The former quarterback has now ventured into sports ownership, where he is a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders and English Championship team Birmingham.

Kraft has owned the Patriots since 1994 and was a key member of the front office that drafted Brady more than two decades ago. Now he has explained what happened behind the scenes that led to Brady’s exit from the Patriots at the end of the 2019 season, including what he said to the quarterback.

“I always would talk to him, and he would take less money to play for the Patriots, and you know we have a salary cap,” Kraft said on The David Rubenstein Show. “So, I always assured him that whatever money I didn’t pay him wasn’t going into my pocket, it was going to other players who would be around him, and if we won those kind of trophies, he would be the biggest beneficiary for the rest of his life which in fact has happened.

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“You know, if the Patriots can’t win a Super Bowl, I’m always rooting for Tom Brady. After being with him for 20 years, we could have franchised him or done other things. I said to him when he did his last contract two years before that at year 20, he would decide whether he would stay with us or not. I think he earned that right, and for his own personal reasons he felt it was best to move on.”

Kraft welcomed Brady back to Foxborough on the opening day of the 2023 NFL season on September 10. The former Patriots quarterback was honoured in a ceremony before the team’s home opener against the Philadelphia Eagles at Gillette Stadium.