Wow. In the honor of Halloween, Bill Belichick did one of the spookiest things in recent memory by trading away backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo in the exact middle of the season without hesitation nor warning. This leaves the forty-year-old wonder in Tom Brady as the only current quarterback on the roster after trading Jacoby Brissett away about two months ago. At the end of the day, the Patriots literally couldn’t afford to keep both Brady and Garoppolo, and I personally don’t think Belichick was ever really high on Brissett to begin with.
So, what exactly does this mean for Brady? For starters, the Patriots opted to side with three-ish years of Tom Brady over ten-ish years of Jimmy Garoppolo. This is a major, and I mean major, turn of events after New England did everything in their power just six months ago to keep Garoppolo, turning down every offer from every interested team, which there were a lot of, by the way. The organization made us all believe that Garoppolo was Brady’s successor after fielding multiple first-round picks around the time of the Draft, and especially after Brissett was traded away to the Colts, for crying out loud.
Apparently, the tables have turned in just half a year. This trade just about guarantees that Brady will have played his entire career with the New England Patriots and my God is that the most incredible sentence I’ve ever written, or what? Why did Belichick and the Patriots suddenly change their minds, though? That’s a difficult question to answer.
Nobody knows what’s going on at 1 Patriot Place except for the people inside 1 Patriot Place. One minute Belichick is feeding Adam Schefter things to the likes of “Garoppolo is Brady’s successor and nothing will change that” and the next minute he’s feeding him “Yeah, about that, the kid is as good as gone”. It’s stressful, but that’s the way it is and the way it always has been.
Think about it logically: keeping both Brady and Garoppolo was never going to work out. The Patriots obviously thought it was going to work out, whether Brady did fall off a cliff sooner rather than later or the stars aligned or what-have-you. I believe the team got together and was like, “we have the greatest quarterback of all time continuing to play at a high level in his forties for absolute dirt cheap. We can’t give that up for an essentially unproven 25-year-old who wants the big bucks.” The smart thing to do is to let Brady ride into the sunset until he reaches his mid-forties and then figure it out from there, which is exactly what the team is finally set on doing.
With that being said, I’m not entirely sure this was Belichick’s total decision. I think in a way, he knows the best thing to do is to get the most out of the GOAT while you can, but he also truly thought that Garoppolo was the future. No deal goes through without the owner pitching in and giving his say; this was probably more a Kraft decision than anything. Thus, I think that when Brady hangs up his cleats, Belichick will hang up his hoodie. This wouldn’t be the case if Garoppolo stayed, though. Bill has wanted to win a title without Brady for a while now, and that window may have just closed shut.
As Belichick himself said, the Patriots had the best quarterback situation in the league for the longest time. Because of that, something had to give sooner or later. Garoppolo was already an expensive backup to begin with and he wanted a big contract, and soon. Along with that, he wanted playing time. Can you blame him? This was the ideal scenario for both sides: Brady gets to finish his career here and Garoppolo gets the best possible opportunity in San Francisco. Yes, the Patriots obviously could and should have done this six months ago, but you can’t totally blame them for waiting it out a bit and putting some hard thought into this decision.
New England was more than willing to carry both quarterbacks, but Garoppolo, on the other hand, wasn’t willing to wait any longer. I’m sure watching and learning from the greatest was the highest honor possible, but at some point, he needed to get actual playing time if he wanted to go anywhere in his pro career. The Patriots, right now, can only win with Brady at his best, so why even bother clinging on to Garoppolo and his potential just to watch him walk in a few months?
Once again, as if Belichick hasn’t taught fans this lesson one million times before, NEVER get attached to a player, let alone a freaking backup. I understand the potential Garoppolo has and of course his utter beauty, but as Patriots fans, we should all know at this point that it’s just silly to get attached to a player like him. Think about it: it doesn’t matter who the backup is as long as Brady is around, which he seemingly will be for the remainder of his playing days. The dropoff is going to be so significant that it doesn’t matter whether Garoppolo or myself is the second-stringer. An old Tom Brady is better than any and every other option out there. Employing both Brady and Garoppolo was never going to work out; that’s the way the league works.
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