Alex Guerrero and Tom Brady's Long and Complicated Relationship Explained

The May 2024 Netflix roast of Tom Brady was way better than it should have been. Centered around the greatest quarterback of all time, the event saw Tom able to take a joke and actually deliver a few good ones himself. But the unexpected highlight was coach Bill Belichick.

Bill got in one of the best barbs against both Tom and his former personal trainer/guru Alex Guerrero. The joke — "People say that Tom and I butted heads a lot, and in a way, that was true, but not really. It was hard to butt heads with Tom because he was so far up Alex Guerrero’s a--" — was much funnier than expected and made even better when the camera cut to Alex.

In a 2017 video interview with Business Insider, Alex opened up about how he and the GOAT got together. “​​[Tom] had sustained an injury and wasn't really responding to traditional therapy he was receiving. So that's when we got together and worked on him and got him better really quick, and we've been together ever since.”

The publication followed up about Alex’s qualifications. His answer led to promoting Tom's brand TB12: “So my master’s is in traditional Chinese medicine. So, you know, that's how — when I graduated school, I really loved sports, and that's how I kind of got into it and developed the technique that's today become known as the TB12 method.”

For better or worse, there’s no TB12 without Alex. The person Tom referred to as a "spiritual guide, counselor, pal, nutrition advisor, trainer, massage therapist and family member” in a New York Times profile in 2015 has been a gift and a curse to Patriots Nation. If you’re on Tom’s side, he's an alternative medicine doctor that helped Tom and worked with fellow Pats Danny Amendola, Jacoby Brissett, Julian Edelman, Jimmy Garoppolo, Rob Gronkowski, Duron Harmon, Chris Hogan, Ty Law, and others.

If you’re on the Bill Belichick side of the argument, Alex was a bad influence and a snake oil salesman. Bill stripped Alex of his Pats privileges in 2017. In an ESPN feature published Jan. 5, 2018, titled “For Kraft, Brady and Belichick, is this the beginning of the end?,” Alex is at the center of the rift between Tom and Bill and the organization. One highlight in the piece is about the promises of TB12.

"When athletes get injured, they shouldn't blame their sport," Tom wrote in his book, per ESPN. The method was so consuming and unwavering in its rules and convictions that, while it helped some players, it felt "like a cult" to others, one Patriots staffer said. The way TB12 began to creep into Brady's life worried people close to the QB, many of whom were suspicious of Guerrero. "Tom changed," said a friend of Tom's. "That's where a lot of these problems started."

Working together on the TB12 brand for years, Tom and Alex are still friends even though they split as business partners. On Oct. 10, 2023, NESN’s Dale Arnold broke the business news: “Word I’m hearing is that Tom Brady and Alex Guerrero are no longer in business together. TB12 seems to be closing all facilities and there may be a new business model for Brady.”

The next day WEEI reported, “The TB12 facility located at Patriot Place in Foxboro will close on Friday, Oct. 20, and reopen as 'TBRx Franklin' in Franklin, Mass., on Monday, Oct. 23,” and “Brady’s likeness and endorsement remain on TBRx landing pages, but he is now listed as a client as opposed to a business partner.”

That same month Tom wished Alex a happy birth in his Instagram story, and, based on the fact that they appeared at Tom's Netflix roast, the two are obviously still friends.