Tom Brady's "Softest Middle Finger" To Gisele Bündchen After Her Baby News Was Hiding In Plain Sight, Friend Claims

A new Tom Brady biography says a two-word Instagram caption carried a message for Gisele Bündchen. Author Lars Anderson claims Brady posted a sunset photo of himself throwing a football in March 2025, about a month after Bündchen welcomed a baby with Joaquim Valente. The caption read "True Love." One friend of Brady's called it "the softest middle finger," according to Anderson's book, "Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness." The book went on sale on Tuesday. Neither Brady nor Bündchen has publicly confirmed the meaning, and their representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Why is Tom Brady's "True Love" post being called the softest middle finger?

On the surface, it looked like classic Brady content. His right arm is extended, a football spirals out of his hand, and a golden sunset lights the frame. Nothing in the picture points to his personal life.

The link, Anderson says, sits in the caption. He writes that "True Love" is the exact phrase Bündchen repeatedly used to describe Brady's relationship with football. So a routine throwing photo, posted after her baby news, read differently to those around him. Anderson claims they saw "no ambiguity" in it.

Strip that detail away and the photo is just a former quarterback showing off his arm.

The timing adds weight. Bündchen and Valente welcomed their son in February 2025, more than two years after her divorce from Brady was finalized in October 2022. They had been married for 13 years. The Daily Mail, which obtained excerpts, reports that a friend said Brady was "stung" by the news. Anderson also describes Instagram as Brady's favorite place for broad and often cryptic messages.

Brady named no one, and the caption works just as well as a plain love letter to football. That ambiguity is what gives the claim its bite.

Has Tom Brady or Gisele Bündchen responded to the claim?

Not so far. People reported that representatives for both did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday. Brady has never publicly said the post was aimed at his ex-wife, so the "middle finger" reading rests on Anderson's reporting and one friend quoted in the book.

That is worth keeping in mind as the book lands. Anderson built it on more than 350 interviews, and it looks at how Brady's all-in approach to football shaped both his record-setting career and his personal life. The Instagram episode fits that theme neatly, which may be why it is drawing so much attention. Excerpts appeared in People and the Daily Mail before release day.

Bündchen has since married Valente, and Brady, 49, is now Fox's lead NFL analyst.

The claim hinges on a single phrase. If Bündchen did use "true love" for Brady's football devotion, as Anderson says, the caption reads differently. If not, it is only a football photo.