The Facts: As the Patriots prepare for their first wild-card game in a decade, everyone needs to be bracing for the possibility that Saturday night’s game at Gillette Stadium will be the last home game of Brady‘s career with the team. At this point, no one knows what will happen — including the Patriots and Brady. “It truly is a ‘wait and see’ type of situation,” Mike Reiss of ESPN.com reported on Friday.
Diehards Line:Reiss added that the team’s approach to such situation has been to put them “in the drawer” until the season ends. As PFT notes, at some point, the drawer will fly open and Brady either will stay with the Patriots, or he won’t. He has reiterated recently that he still plans to play three more years. If that’s not in New England, it necessarily will have to be somewhere else. Brady's contract voids at the end of the 2019 league year, and it includes a provision that won't allow him to be franchise tagged, meaning he's headed for free agency unless the two sides agree on a new extension. That's still possible, but so is his departure. Whatever the case, Brady’s status looms over the entire NFL offseason. If he leaves New England, his next stop will be every bit as big of a story as Peyton Manning’s relocation to Denver in 2012.