JG trade story: Patriots tried

[XLIX]

And, in this case, a lack of carbonite.

Garoppolo: I can't see.
Belichick: Your eyesight will return in time.
Garoppolo: Where am I?
Belichick: Gillette Stadium
Garoppolo: Who are you?
Belichick: Someone who loves you....

 

[Silver Blue&Red]

There is nothing, on this planet, worth more than squeezing every ounce out of TB.

I would be pissed if they traded a 45 yr old TB, if he wanted to and could still play at his current level.

 

[Tony2046]

Dear Tony,
you know how much I respect your contribtions and your posture on this board. I am a little surprised about what seems like simplicity and shortsightedness of this post.

Of course nobody “knows“ about anything of the future of JG like nobody knows about the future of TB or anything else in this life.

As you know well its never an A B choice and in this case especially. Lombardi uses a nice name for it: false duality.

For anyone who cared listening to people who actually have some knowledge of/or worked with BB, Pats, FO . Patriots believed they have their next QB in Jimmy. And as you well know this is not a small thing in this league not even for master BB. Letting what you believe is the future of your franchise (unforeseeable in the sense how exactly it will go or for how long of course but with knowledge and experience of what you have) is not an easy or a simple matter.

Saying they chose Brady over Jimmy is too simple. Yes, the end result is Brady stays, Jimmy goes. But there was never a question (I suppose and believe so) of parting ways with Brady until he can perform and wants to. So there was never this choice, the “Brady or Jimmy“ choice. The only choice was about Jimmy. They choose to try to keep Jimmy. But at the end it was not their choice. Jimmy was the one who was choosing. He chose what most who have firm believe in themselves would. They let him go.

People will argue they could keep him on a tag if they really wanted to. I don't see BB as a man holding on to players against their will. Many people see BB as cold hearted businessman doing everything for winning and “what's best for the team“. I see him as a man with biggest football heart who also does what is right. Letting Jimmy go in this situation was the right thing to do.

I believe yesterday was not a good day for BB, Patriots and front office. They all invested a lot in Jimmy, were happy with what they groomed and finally they had to let go. It shouldn't be a good day for Pats fans. Greater uncertainty about the future enters. Finding and grooming another quality QB let alone good pocket QB is not easy. It was not an easy decision to make . not easy to take.

On to Denver, I guess.. (sigh)

They justifiably tried to keep Jimmy here but it came down to a choice. They could have let Brady go at the end of the season and moved on with JG but they didn't. Tough choice. BB chose to take a 2nd round pick instead of letting the season play out which also implies BB knew that TB would be playing next year and also meant JG would have possibly sat the bench. JG knew that as well.

My post did not discount JG's value or the difficulty of the decision.

True we cannot predict the future of either QB but we know which one has the proven ability to win at a championship level while the other has started two regular season games.

BB's choices reflects on how he valued both QB's. He valued both of them highly hence JG not being traded earlier but in the end he chose to keep Brady.

I think it was the right choice and I also think trying to keep JG on the roster was the right choice even if it meant losing a rumored first round pick and settling for a high second.

I do agree that it was a tough day at Gillette for all involved including JG. I'm convinced JG wanted to be the starting QB for the Pats and I also think he had the right type of mentality to be the QB after TB which is no small task.

Sucks to see him go. I'll wish him the best but I'm glad they chose TB.

 

[Love The Drake]

They justifiably tried to keep Jimmy here but it came down to a choice. They could have let Brady go at the end of the season and moved on with JG but they didn't. Tough choice. BB chose to take a 2nd round pick instead of letting the season play out which also implies BB knew that TB would be playing next year and also meant JG would have possibly sat the bench. JG knew that as well.

My post did not discount JG's value or the difficulty of the decision.

True we cannot predict the future of either QB but we know which one has the proven ability to win at a championship level while the other has started two regular season games.

BB's choices reflects on how he valued both QB's. He valued both of them highly hence JG not being traded earlier but in the end he chose to keep Brady.

I think it was the right choice and I also think trying to keep JG on the roster was the right choice even if it meant losing a rumored first round pick for and settling for a high second.

I do agree that it was a tough day at Gillette for all involved including JG. I'm convinced JG wanted to be the starting QB for the Pats and I also think he had the right type of mentality to be the QB after TB which is no small task.

Sucks to see him go. I'll wish him the best but I'm glad they chose TB.

Let's see if San Fran got the next Steve Young

 

[Tony2046]

Let's see if San Fran got the next Steve Young

He could be but remember that Young only won one SB in his career as a starting QB.

My guess is that he'll be one of the top QB's in the league in the next couple of years if not sooner.

 

[dafoe2016]

Back in 2008, a sizable contingent on this forum wanted the Pats to trade Brady and roll with Cassel, because based on what they'd seen over the course of 15 games they were convinced Cassel would be a very good QB for a decade at least, while Brady, being 30, had another few years at most before his inevitable decline started.

The point: we don't know how much longer Brady has, but we know the level he's on and we know that he's demonstrated no signs at all of slowing down. We also know that he's making Mike Glennon money, so when he starts to lose it he can lose quite a bit before there's any question at all as to whether he's worth his contract. With Garoppolo, you're going to have to pay top tier money to a guy that has not yet shown in-game that he's top tier, and then hope he can continually justify that pay over the next 5 years. There was always going to be some team desperate enough to do that, but there was no reason for it to be us while we already have our guy.

Projecting out 5 years is tricky enough, to state that he's going to be around 10-15 years from now is kinda crazy. Nobody can know that. There is not a single player in the league that you can project 15 years into the future, there is absolutely no way to know that Garoppolo will still be in the league and worth starting at 35-40 based on a body of work that includes two starts and one significant injury. We've been spoiled by Brady, but be careful to never mistake his career arc for anything normal or at all replicable.

Food for thought: how good would Garoppolo have to become to justify trading Brady to keep him? If he spent the next 10 years mirroring Matt Ryan's career arc, would it be worth giving up Brady's remaining years? I think that's a pretty clear no. How about Carson Palmer? Again, a pretty clear no. Matt Stafford? I'm going to go with a no yet again, and a no on Eli Manning while we're at it. All of these guys have been considered very good quarterbacks during their careers, and to make getting rid of Brady worthwhile you'd be banking on Garoppolo being better than all of them. It's only when you get up into the Rivers/Roethlisberger tier that I'd say sure, the prospect of 10+ years with that level of QB play is worth moving on from Brady, and even then I wouldn't feel great about the tradeoff. Which is a long way of saying that he would basically have to become a top-5 quarterback for the bulk of his career.

Look around the league. The odds that our next QB is not a **** show are pretty low statistically speaking. All the QBs you listed could have a title contender built around them and are likely much better than whomever we replace Brady with.

 

[dafoe2016]

What about his performance to date has suggested to you that he's going to fall off a cliff in the next 1-2 years? I know people like to say that the end comes suddenly with QBs, but that's not really true. Brett Favre was notoriously inconsistent from age 36 onward, he was just as bad at 36 as at 40. Manning was dealing with an injury that forced him to rework all of his mechanics and inevitably led into another injury that he couldn't recover from. Warren Moon had a pronounced decline at age 40, then rebounded at 41 and fell off the cliff again at 42.

Brady, meanwhile, has without exception been an elite QB for every snap he's played over the last decade-plus. There has been no sign of decline. So until there's a real, tangible sign of decline, I don't see any point at all in hand-wringing over the theoretical possibility that this time next year he might be a **** quarterback.

My stance on this has been pretty consistent throughout: I'm going to wait to see some real, meaningful indication of decline, and only after that happens will I think it's reasonable to start putting a timeline on the remainder of Brady's career. People have been projecting the inevitable decline for 5+ years now, and they get it wrong every year. They'll get it right eventually, but they'll have been wrong 10 times before they were right. It's like Ron Paul predicting economic collapse every two years, or people who say the Spurs got old every offseason (I made a nice chunk of basically free money over the years betting the over on the Spurs win total every season). If you're wrong 10 times before you're right, then you weren't right at all.

The day we can definitively say Brady is in decline, then I'll be fine with this "1-2 years of Brady vs. 10 years of the other guy" talk, but since that hasn't happened yet I just don't see the point. It's highly likely that Brady has more years left in his career as a top-3 QB than Matt Ryan, Eli Manning, Phil Rivers and Carson Palmer had combined over their full careers, and again, projecting Garoppolo as a Matt Ryan / Phil Rivers caliber QB is pretty optimistic.

And **** it, even if Brady does decline over the next 1-2 years, that'll give Belichick/McDaniels plenty of time to draft and develop his replacement.

The entire AFC East has had 20 years to come up with a decent QB. How's that worked out? The highlights, off the top of my head, are Duante Culpepper, Vinnie Testaverde and Chad Pennington. People act like finding an above average, or average QB, is a given. It is anything but. They odds are heavily stacked against it.

 

[Bill Lee]

Let's see if San Fran got the next Steve Young

Or the next Brock Osweiler. Or something in between. No one knows.

Personally, I wish JG does well in SF, as long as he's not playing against the Patriots.

 

[BradyFTW!]

Look around the league. The odds that our next QB is not a **** show are pretty low statistically speaking. All the QBs you listed could have a title contender built around them and are likely much better than whomever we replace Brady with.

And yet Eli is the only one who ever actually won anything, and those teams weren't built around him by any stretch of the imagination, so that's true only if you define title contender in extremely nebulous terms that don't actually mean anything. I'll take 2-3 years of being the odds-on, guaranteed-to-make-the-AFCCG favorite over 8 years of being a four seed that nobody expects to win anything, without a second thought. For every 2011 Giants / 2012 Ravens that catch fire for a month, there's 30 teams that predictably go on the road and get their **** kicked in by truly elite teams benefiting from the play of all-time great players like Tom Brady. We've been on the right side of this matchup for so long that I'm having trouble grasping how so many people here still fail to understand it.

As for the current state of QBs, I firmly believe that's equal parts shortage of talent and lack of development. The Pats develop QBs extremely well: two weeks from now, Brady, Garoppolo, Brissett, Hoyer, Mallett and Cassell will have started games in the NFL this year. Garoppolo and Brissett both look like real starting NFL quarterbacks. I'm as confident in the Pats as I am in anyone else to develop the next young QB who breaks through, and there is talent to be found in the NFL draft. Prescott went in the 4th, Carr went in the 2nd, Wilson went in the 3rd. You just have to have the talent evaluation and coaching to draft and develop the right QB in the right way, and you have to have a coaching staff that can scheme to your young QB's strengths.

Most of all, though, I think posts like yours are continually understating how good Brady really is, and how consistent he is. If Brady was 'just' a top 5 quarterback, then sure, move on from him a year or two early like Belichick does with every other high-priced veteran. But a) Brady isn't highly paid, he has like the 20th highest cap hit this year, and b) but Brady and Rodgers tower over every other QB in the league. Having one of them is by far the biggest advantage in the sport, and the only explanation I can come up with for people being in some weird hurry to end this era is that I guess people just really don't understand how irreplaceable it is. Last year's MVP is currently putting up middle-of-the-road production, and this year's MVP frontrunner was so unimpressive last year that his team traded up in the first round to draft his replacement. The guys I quoted earlier -- Ryan, Eli, etc. -- are close to the best case scenario for Garoppolo. It's even more likely that he ends up being, say, Alex Smith: the kind of QB who's just good enough that you're reluctant to replace him, since you can build an actual playoff team if you perfectly build an offense around him.

We have the rarest and most valuable commodity in NFL history, who is showing no signs of slowing down, and some of you guys are so loaded up on unverified potential that you're downright eager to throw it away for a guy who's going to command $20M per year on 2 NFL starts.

 

[Bruins29]

We have the rarest and most valuable commodity in NFL history, who is showing no signs of slowing down, and some of you guys are so loaded up on unverified potential that you're downright eager to throw it away for a guy who's going to command $20M per year on 2 NFL starts.

 

[Deus Irae]

Look around the league. The odds that our next QB is not a **** show are pretty low statistically speaking. All the QBs you listed could have a title contender built around them and are likely much better than whomever we replace Brady with.

The odds of QB draft success depend on draft location, so your claim is asinine.

 

[BradyFTW!]

The odds of QB draft success depend on draft location, so your claim is asinine.

No, you don't get it man. Cleveland whiffing on and failing to develop 7 different quarterbacks this decade somehow means we're statistically unlikely to draft and develop another good quarterback.

 

[Pats1989]

They picked Brady over Jimmy. There. Now we know what they really thought. As good as they thought he was, they valued short term Brady over longterm Jimmy.

BB has made alot of bold moves in his career without ( As it appears) regret. Releasing or trading Tom Brady might be something theorganization could never do.

 

[Deus Irae]

No, you don't get it man. Cleveland whiffing on and failing to develop 7 different quarterbacks this decade somehow means we're statistically unlikely to draft and develop another good quarterback.

Dafoe is a troll, and I can respect that, because quality trolling is an art. But he's a ****ty troll, and that gives a bad name to people who can troll well .

 

[Mack Herron]

 

[Kdo5]

Not buying that Kraft overruled Belichick or anything like that. And if he did well props to Bob for once. Would be moronic to trade Brady when he is still playing at the top of his game.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

You’re quoting a golf guy?

 

[Bradyking12]

My guess is that he'll be one of the top QB's in the league in the next couple of years if not sooner.

Doubt it, I think mid teir is his ceiling, BB wouldn't have traded him if he knew he would be one of the best QBs in the league

 

[Xerostomia]

An extreme analogy, would be what the Colts did when they drafted Luck. For arguments sake, imagine if the Colts traded Luck and got a package similar/better than what Washington gave up, but kept Manning. Quite possibly the Colts make it to 2 more super bowls with Manning as the QB.

I would bet most Colts fans would in a heartbeat have that scenario, than what Luck has given them so far, and what Luck may or may not give them in the next many years.

As a Pats fan, 1-2-3 more years of Brady regardless of results is 'better' than the potential of JG. In 20 years, if JG has won a few super bowls, then I will eat my words and regret the trade. Personally I have my doubts that he even wins 1 as that would be an accomplishment in itself.

What Brady has done, consistently, regardless of adversity can never be replicated. 3 years of Brady is far superior to most QB's careers.

 

[Tony2046]

Doubt it, I think mid teir is his ceiling, BB wouldn't have traded him if he knew he would be one of the best QBs in the league

You could be right. I was trying to be sensitive for the resident Garoppolites.

Seriously though I don't know what his ceiling is. I do think he'll be better than mid tier but that's just a guess.