Tom Brady to the Chargers? Patriots QB Fuels Rumors After Liking Post About Philip Rivers Leaving Franchise

Tom Brady's ability to manipulate defenses has been evident for the last two decades, but it appears the New England Patriots great is similarly at ease when it comes to making social media dance to his tune.

On Monday, the 42-year-old liked an Instagram post from the NFL announcing Philip Rivers and the Los Angeles Chargers had officially parted ways.

Brady's reaction to the post could have simply been a nod to a fellow veteran quarterback, who had just announced he will enter free agency next month after spending 16 years with the Chargers.

However, with the NFL being the NFL, Brady's interaction immediately got people talking.

The six-time Super Bowl winner will be a free agent on March 18 and the Patriots can't assign him a franchise tag. This means he could effectively walk away from New England for the first time in his NFL career.

If the prospect of a Brady-less Patriots remains somewhat hard to imagine, given he and the franchise have been synonymous with each other for two decades, the possibility of him leaving New England should not be discarded either.

New England has no obvious replacement for Brady on its roster and starting over with a new team two years short of his 45th birthday—he will turn 43 in August—seems like a major gamble for Brady.

At the same time, as Joe Namath and Joe Montana proved, even the most loyal of franchise quarterbacks may fancy a change of his scenery in the winter of their careers.

Should Brady opt to leave New England he will not be short of suitors. A quarterback vacancy in Los Angeles could add a further layer of intrigue to what promises to be the story of the offseason.

A California native, Brady has spent his entire professional career in New England and may fancy moving closer to home, not to mention to a sunnier and warmer climate. The Chargers went 5-11 last season but are just one year removed from losing to the Patriots in the divisional round of the playoffs and have enough talent on both sides of the ball to make a return to the postseason at the first time of asking.

As per Spotrac, the Chargers have $51 million in salary cap available this offseason, the 12th-most in the NFL and $12 million more than the NFL average.

Aside from the obvious benefits on the field, recruiting Brady would be a major PR coup for a franchise that is due to move into the state-of-the-art SoFi Stadium at the beginning of next season.

If that wasn't intriguing enough, whoever replaces Rivers under center with the Chargers will take on reigning Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes for supremacy in the AFC West for the foreseeable future.

The prospect of Brady looking to immediately dethrone Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs would make the AFC West the division to watch next season.

Of course, social media interactions should be taken with more than a pinch of salt when it comes to players' futures. After all, less than two weeks ago Brady sparked panic in New England with a vague social media post that turned out to be nothing more than a Super Bowl ad.

For the Chargers and Brady, the future will be resolved in just over a month.