Sports Illustrated's Peter King devoted a big chunk of space in his Monday Morning Quarterback piece to the Patriots and Tom Brady's new contract extension. King spoke with Robert Kraft, who detailed the inner working of the deal.
King explained that Kraft and Brady shared a plane ride to Los Angeles just after the season ended and began hammering away at what would become a three-year extension worth $27 million.
Interstingly, Kraft told King that he does not expect to revisit the deal in two years when the below market portion of the contract will kick in with Brady due just $7 million in salary in 2015.
"No, no, no," Kraft told King. "This is a real deal. Look at our track record. We don't do fake deals. The contract we have with Tom Brady is a real contract we will both live by."
King does a nice job of providing some insight into Kraft's thinking as the Patriots owner offers plenty of details behind the inner workings of his relationship with Brady.
"I was probably wearing my fan hat as much as anything else. I just didn't want to ever see this become like Joe Montana leaving San Francisco, Emmitt Smith leaving Dallas, Brett Favre leaving Green Bay, Peyton Manning leaving Indianapolis. If Tom Brady played out this current contract and left us, there was no doubt in my mind that someone out there would pay him top dollar, and they should, for his ability, his leadership and his unselfishness.
"I was just trying to stay ahead of the curve. If we were going to have to pay him elite-quarterback money and have elite-quarterback cap numbers, I just didn't think we would be able to build a team. We don't want to have a team where we're paying 18 to 20 percent to a player on the cap. I wanted to do something elegant that would work for everybody. I had been talking to him off and on for maybe 18 months, about how I wanted him to finish his career here, and about how we both have to be smart about it. I just really want him to end his career a Patriot.
"I presented an idea to him that I thought could work for both sides. He takes care of his body in terms of exercise and working out and his food. Tom's intake of food is, really, so healthy. He has a whole style of living that is so important to him ... We're taking a chance making this commitment, and he's taking one, in terms of his ability to maximize pay. I just thought if winning is the most important thing to him, and I think it is, and it certainly is to our family, this gives us the best chance to win. Hopefully we have an elite quarterback that, even if his skills decline even a little bit, he'll still be better than 90 percent of the quarterbacks in the league. And his legacy -- I already believe he's the greatest of all time -- if we win one or two more, he can solidify that."
