13. New England (trade with San Francisco)—Tua Tagovailoa, quarterback, Alabama
So Tagovailoa could drop, and Bill Belichick really doesn’t want to take a quarterback now, with one draft pick in the top 85 this year and needs all over his roster. And truly: I have no indication, no inside information, that says he’d do this. It’s simply a guess. But think if you’re Belichick. Because your team never finishes 3-13, you never have a chance to get one of the best quarterbacks in the college game. Until Tagovailoa’s hip popped out of the socket last November, forcing immediate and urgent surgery, he was 1/1A with the transcendent Joe Burrow to be the first pick in this draft. And you don’t want to pillage the lone first or lone second-round pick from next year’s draft. But do you do it for a great but pockmarked talent such as Tagovailoa five months after major hip surgery? I do know Belichick would have confidence in his player-procurement skills.
I also don’t know what the New England orthopods will say about him. I do know one respected team doctor for an NFL team who gave Tagovailoa the once-over at the combine, and I asked him what he thought about Tagovailoa’s propensity for injury while at Alabama—a broken hand, two high-ankle sprains, and a hip dislocation most recently. This is what this doctor—whose team is not in the market for a first-round quarterback—told me Thursday:
“These contact injuries are part of the game. You ask yourself, ‘Is this guy injury-prone, or does he have a bullseye on him because he’s a crucial player on his team?’ I’ve seen a few of the hip dislocations in football, and my experience is that if you lose blood supply to the hip for a long-enough period of time, you’re in trouble. I don’t think that was the case here. As I see it, the effects of the dislocation might show up when he’s 35, but not when he’s 25.”
Cautiously optimistic then. Tough call for a franchise, but when would the Patriots ever get a shot at a potential superstar quarterback? Even if they had to throw in next year’s first-rounder, I think this would be a risk worth taking for the Patriots.
