The Tampa Bay Buccaneers entered a renaissance when Tom Brady landed in Tampa in 2020. They immediately won a Super Bowl — the franchise’s second — and had a 13-win season the next year, and there’s a decent argument that the Tom Brady era in Tampa Bay has led to a culture of success that remains.

Brady was able to accomplish this with Bruce Arians at the helm, as opposed to his old coach with the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick. But according to a former teammate of Brady’s, that success might have been even greater with Brady’s old coach.

McCourty spoke on the final episode of Vice’s Brady Vs Belichick: The Verdict, a documentary that argued the case for whether Bill Belichick or Tom Brady was the driving engine behind the Patriots dynasty. McCourty believes that the endless arguments around the two are silly, and he used an example from Brady’s tenure with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2020-23.

He noted that while Brady was successful in Tampa Bay, there’s no reason to think that the Bucs wouldn’t have been even better with Bill Belichick at the helm.

“If you’re being honest, because you have such a small sample size that he won one without him, then you would argue, ‘Put Bill Belichick over there and they might win three,'” McCourty said.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady drops back to pass against the Dallas Cowboys. / Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

There was no Bill Belichick in Tampa Bay, but there was Bruce Arians, who helped lead the Bucs to a Super Bowl win in 2020 and then a 13-win season in 2021 that saw the team get bounced in the Divisional Round to the Los Angeles Rams.

The offense was helmed by offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich, but McCourty seemed to insinuate in the documentary that Brady may have had a bit more of a hand in the offense than some quarterbacks do in Tampa Bay.

“When he went to Tampa and things started to change, he had to be Tom Brady, the star quarterback. He also had to be a little bit of the offensive coordinator,” McCourty said. “He had to help draw cards and do different things. In New England, he didn’t do any of that. He came in and he got to be Tom Brady, the player.”

We’ll of course never know if Bill Belichick could have gotten the Bucs more rings, but Bucs fans will be happy that they got the ring they did with Brady in 2020.