Wickersham Strikes: Belichick talked to Giants/Dolphins/Washington about coaching there in Brady standoff

[Ring 6]

Kraft was willing to keep Brady until he wanted to leave, BB wanted to move on next season?

Where do you get that BB wanted to move on? Brady wanted to move on and Kraft wished he didn’t, belichick moved forward once Brady left.

 

[Ian]

Kraft was willing to keep Brady until he wanted to leave, BB wanted to move on next season?

I do agree, that ended up being the right move. I've said it before but the Garoppolo thing was just a matter of bad timing. It is what it is, unfortunately.

 

[Ring 6]

When Brady left, it become somewhat clear that those reports from 2018 were mostly true. The Dynasty book confirms a lot of it too. I can believe he spoke to other teams to gauge interest should the "standoff" with Brady not go in his favor. It's just kind of a bummer to think the greatest dynasty in football had to come to that kind of an ending but I guess most things in life end up that way.

Brady leaving in 2020 doesn’t prove unfounded rumors in 2016 were true.
By that argument wickersham could have made up any story he wanted and now it would be true. Like tb12 locking Jimmy out lol.

 

[Ian]

Like tb12 locking Jimmy out lol.

That I agree likely wasn't true and if it happened, it wasn't at all intentional.

 

[Kontradiction]

Flores was hired in 2019.
Miami hired a coach 2016.
The skins didn’t have an opening in 17-18 either.
As usual with this guys things don’t line up.

So BB was on the phone with those two teams 2-3 years before there were openings with them and recommending his guys? You honestly think that was the case? And I don’t believe that Washington was one of those teams, and said as much. No way in Hell he’d work for Snyder.

 

[Ian]

Oddly enough, this interview with Wickersham on WEEI is from 2/27/21:

Ken and Curtis- Seth Wickersham joins the show to discuss Brady and Belichick's relationship; Ken thinks 10 quarterbacks could have won the Super Bowl with the Bucs - Weekend Shows - Omny.fm

Hour 3- Seth Wickersham joins the show to discuss what is going to be in his new book as well as the relationship between Brady and Belichick. Ken is convinced that at least 10 quarterbacks could have won the Super Bowl with Tampa Bay.

omny.fm

I just transcribed this part of it:

Did Bill, to your knowledge, Seth, ever try to trade Brady before they shipped Jimmy out of town?

"I don't know. I mean there's been a lot of reporting on that and I have no reason to not believe it. I personally don't know how detailed those conversations ever got."

I guess the follow-up would be, I wonder if Brady's camp believes that? Even if it never happened, do you think theres' a segment of Brady's people who think that's the case and maybe started the deterioration of the relationship?

"You know, look, when I wrote...part of the genius of Bill Belichick is that he's been able to just unemotionally move on from players, and he always does it brutally. It's well documented that Brady and Brady's family felt like that would be him inevitably. Right? No matter what his accomplishments were. His dad once told me, the moment he finds someone better for a dollar less, Tom knows that Belichick will move on from him. But Garoppolo was interesting. He was a quarterback that Bill was invested in and in 2018, when my story came out, I took a lot of heat for, you know, their relationship, but in fact, he was invested in Jimmy. When he traded him, he found a location where he thought Jimmy would thrive. He didn't do that with everybody."

"It later came out that Bill texted Jimmy after every game. Like I said, Bill was really invested in Jimmy and so I think that the Brady people kind of knew that Bill really was invested in Jimmy and it probably wouldn't take much a slip in Tom's performance for the team to move on from him. That said, Tom never gave him that opening. He's a phenomenal football player and he kept playing at a completely high level, through injuries, through various personnel packages that they had in the huddle, he was an amazing - and still is - an amazing football player."

 

[ralmat55]

We will have to agree to disagree.
I don’t know of any that were confirmed, just people are more apt to believe them now.
But we do know that John Lynch came out and said he asked belichick about Brady and was laughed at.
If one of the 2 people involved flat out says it didn’t happen I’m not uncertain that the “reporter” telling a story otherwise is wrong.

After all the lies emanating out of the 49ers camp this off-season, do you still want to cling to Lynch’s flippant quote about being turned down asking for Brady as gospel?

 

[Ring 6]

So BB was on the phone with those two teams 2-3 years before there were openings with them and recommending his guys? You honestly think that was the case? And I don’t believe that Washington was one of those teams, and said as much. No way in Hell he’d work for Snyder.

Im saying it doesn’t line up.

 

[farn]

I believe it. Even the part about Washington.

Bill loves the classic teams & the history of the game. And, let’s keep it real, he’s a weird cat who sometimes likes weird people (Al Davis, Ernie Adams, Shawn Crable)....

 

[Ring 6]

After all the lies emanating out of the 49ers camp this off-season, do you still want to cling to Lynch’s flippant quote about being turned down asking for Brady as gospel?

As opposed to a shlt stirring bson “reporter” who wasn’t there? Are you kidding me?
oh and then there is good old common sense

 

[amfootball]

If this is true, why did Bill stay? Brady left last year which left Bill holding the bag with no succession plan at Qb. Seems odd to me if all this is true why Bill is here and seems as motivated as he has ever been to get back on track this year.

 

[ralmat55]

As opposed to a shlt stirring bson “reporter” who wasn’t there? Are you kidding me?
oh and then there is good old common sense

It fails the common sense test too. You are incapable of believing anything that might cast Bill in a bad light unless it is overridden by your contempt for Cam Newton.

Attack the messenger all you want, but Wickersham despite his BSPN affiliation has been pretty close to spot on his reporting on this subject.

 

[Ian]

He said to lynch “trade the best QB in the nfl, do you think im crazy”?
Brady was still under contract and had shown no signs of breaking down.
Putting Brady in a position to be able to walk at 42 after a dime and injured year is very different than trying to dump him at 38 after winning a Sb.

This was the story from last March, right after news broke about Brady's departure:

How Bill Belichick Set the Stage for Tom Brady to Leave the Patriots

From the article:

How do we get from a trade in 2017 to Brady leaving for Tampa Bay?

At the time, there was an incredible amount of buzz around the NFL that the 49ers originally asked for Garoppolo, but Belichick instead offered Brady. A Patriots source confirms that's how it went down, and a 49ers source close to John Lynch says the first-time general manager couldn't believe his ears when he heard the counteroffer.

Lynch had the chance to trade for the best quarterback ever to play and bring him back to his hometown? It's the ultimate no-brainer, but it didn't happen.

"Kraft shut that s--t down fast," says a source close to Belichick. "So, instead, Lynch gets Garoppolo, but Brady, Belichick and Kraft haven't been the same since Tom learned that Bill was ready to get rid of him. And that lit a fire under his ass."

Brady, the GOAT, fueled by a perceived slight that his head coach wanted to trade a 40-year-old and keep his backup? Yeah, that sounds right.

"You have to remember, this guy has a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Everest," says a former player who knows Brady well.

And every move of Brady's since that late October meeting of the Patriots' holy trinity has been preparing for this moment, speculates his former teammate.

In the article, the call happened because the 49ers were looking for Garoppolo before the deadline and it's possible Bill might have talked about possibly moving Brady after the season. I 100% don't believe Belichick would have dealt Brady midseason, but it's possible the discussion was had and after talking with Kraft, maybe that's when things went south so Belichick dealt Garoppolo.

Again, only Belichick knows what really happened, so who knows.

 

[Ian]

He said to lynch “trade the best QB in the nfl, do you think im crazy”?

And yes, before you ask me, I believe that conversation happened. Shanahan said it publicly and I obviously remember the report and the quote:

John Lynch Confirms Tom Brady Trade Offer, Says Bill Belichick 'Laughed at Me'

"We were calling about Jimmy and we did have that conversation and got quickly rebuffed," Lynch said on Barstool Sports' Pardon My Take podcast.

"I figured, 'What the heck, you gotta take your shot, right? You can't score if you don't shoot.' I had to summon up the courage and Bill [Belichick] laughed at me and basically hung up on me. But hey, I took my shot."

However, looking back, I wonder if that was in the context of a midseason trade. Again, we'll never know, but that would explain things a little better if he laughed at the thought of dealing Brady at the deadline vs giving the 49ers Garoppolo.

 

[patfanken]

this has NO basis in ANY fact. This is classic "click bait" for book sellers

Lets go back (AGAIN) to the time line. The Pats draft JG in 2014 as Brady nears the USUAL time for QB's to start to slow down. Perfectly understandable. The good news is that the draft pick (#62) looks like a good one. Fast forward to 2017 (jimmy's contact year and he's improved, but the fact is that Brady STILL hasn't slowed down and he's STILL the best QB on the team. It didn't hurt that the Pats were on a run where they went to FOUR superbowls in 5 years, and winning 3, WITH the QB they decided to keep. Not to mention another 12 wins in 2019 with the now 42 year old Qb.

So I just can't see much drama happening in 2017. Brady was STILL the better QB. So it wasn't a matter of IF JG was going but when and for how much. THey could either trade him at the deadline or watch him walk away at the end of the year. If I had a complaint it was not trading him back in April where he would have gotten a first for him. In the ned they got a high first for him which might not satisfy some people but it was a LOT better than the 3rd round comp they would have gotten if they had done nothing

They were NOT going to get rid of Tom at that point and 2 Superbowl wins and a 14 win season proved THAT decision to be the correct one. All that being said, there was a good case to be made that Tom looked like he was slowing down in 2019. As it turned out that was more a case about injuries and talent than Brady slowing down.

I have ZERO problem with the Pats and Brady moving on from each other in 2020, especially for Tom. When you are at the end of a career it is perfectly understandable that you should be selfish. He needed to be in a place where he could compete for Superbowls, A place with TONS of skill platyers (and that was BEFORE Gronk and AB signed) and that's where he went.

As for the Pats, No one was complaining about Cam immediately after the Seattle game. And it will always be a great trivia question (and huge monety maker on bets) when it's asked "who was the QB for Edelman's finest day as an NFL WR).

Somehow TH.AT QB was lost between the 2nd and 16th game. Maybe that guy is still in there and for reasons WE don't know Just like we all thought that Brady was losing it after 2019 when it turned out to be things that could be corrected either through health, talent, or both\

At any rate, Wickersham is a headline whore. Show up with a provocative headline and you can get an hour on almost every sports talk show all across the country to flog your book, That's what I'm going to do when my book is ready to be published,.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Garoppolo is/was a really talented quarterback and looked awesome in the limited action we saw. There's no shame in believing he might be the team's future when Brady was a 40-year old QB and it seemed at the time he had 1-2 years left.

I don't blame Bill at all for preferring Garoppolo. I blame him for stupidly trading Garoppolo for a measly second round pick. It was a crappy return and inexusable and was what set off my thinking about Bill doing "what's in the best interest of the team" having zero checks or balances, and that really blew up months later with the Butler benching. But I digress - the Patriots could have - should have - gotten a first round pick for Garoppolo with the only question being how high in the first round and whether or not there was a conditional trigger. Is there any question the 49ers would have agreed to a conditional first round pick if they decided to re-sign Garoppolo? We knew that some team would be pay him $25M plus. The Patriots offered him $15-20M per year on an extension and promised to sweeten it if he became the starter. The return for a player of that value is a second round pick?

Then you have others on this site who miss the point and say "Well - they leveraged that pick into more picks." Just imagine how much trading down and leveraging they could have done with a first round pick, maybe their best draft position in a decade.

 

[Bill Lee]

Great, so this should shut up all the people saying Brady was pushed out of town, here we have Kraft risking the loss of BB just to keep Brady one more season.

I can imagine the fecal soup that the sports talk show are going to be serving up now: BB hates Kraft because he wouldn't let him trade Brady and forced him to dump Jimmy G, that's why he's sticking with Cam for a second season and that's why he blew all of Kraft's money on mid level players, he's doing it all to get back at Kraft.

Of course that doesn't explain why BB wouldn't just ask Kraft to let him out of his contract and if he wouldn't, just go public about Kraft not letting him out.

Ya know, just deal with a disagreement like adults do, try to settle it man to man and if that doesn't work out find a way to leave.

Man, this stuff is a flash back to being twelve years old all over again.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

So I just can't see much drama happening in 2017.

Are you serious?

 

[Ian]

Great, so this should shut up all the people saying Brady was pushed out of town, here we have Kraft risking the loss of BB just to keep Brady one more season.

I can imagine the fecal soup that the sports talk show are going to be serving up now: BB hates Kraft because he wouldn't let him trade Brady and forced him to dump Jimmy G, that's why he's sticking with Cam for a second season and that's why he blew all of Kraft's money on mid level players, he's doing it all to get back at Kraft.

Of course that doesn't explain why BB wouldn't just ask Kraft to let him out of his contract and if he wouldn't, just go public about Kraft not letting him out.

Ya know, just deal with a disagreement like adults do.

Man, this stuff is a flash back to being twelve years old all over again.

At the end of the day, as I said in my first reply in this thread, all Wickersham's interview in the OP did was just re-confirm a story that was brought up previously that we already heard. It shouldn't be much more than that because it isn't anything new.

Nothing to see here

 

[jah]

After the Gronk to Detroit rumors turned out to have some truth to them, I've been a lot more hesitant to write stuff like this off. But who knows?