As has been mentioned by numerous reporters and by Kraft, the franchise tag removal was just so Brady could be a free agent. It doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t settle for less than that. Brady wanted a 2/50 extension in the summer and didn’t want to leave here per reports. Team said they wanted to go year-to-year with him from now on. Brady wasn’t happy and said fine, if you want to go year to year with me, I want to go year to year with you, so I insist you can’t use the franchise tag on me.
That said, I agree he won’t be back here for 18m unless his other offers are in that ballpark (as likely as the Jets winning next year’s Super Bowl in my opinion). But 1 year 25 million, he might even though it’s less than the tag figure.