There’s a lesson to be learned by plenty of young players who enjoy early-career success and who then assume that their success automatically will translate to membership on a new team.
Sometimes, it simply doesn’t.
Receiver Deion Branch found that out the hard way, after forcing his way out of New England because he signed a five-year deal as a second-round pick and didn’t want to play out that fifth year before getting a long-term contract. (It’s hard to blame him in this regard, especially since the labor agreement signed in the year he was traded to Seattle reduced the maximum length of second-year contracts to four years.)
Now, after a bizarre week in which the Patriots abruptly traded a future Hall of Fame receiver, Branch is back -- and he thinks he too would have been in line for Canton if he’d never left.
“I think about it a lot,’' Branch told Peter King of SI.com regarding the issue of what might have been. “My brother and my father do too. They say, ‘You’d be ready to put a gold jacket on if you stayed.’”
But he’s not regretting the fact that he spent four seasons away from the Patriots. Instead, he’s merely happy that he’s in New England again.
“It’s easy to say that now versus back then, and I wish . . . well . . . but we can’t go back on it. We could easily factor in what went wrong, but right now, but I’m very thankful and honored to be back where I belong, and I’m not looking back or anything,’' Branch told King.
The end result? Nine catches for 98 yards and a touchdown for the 31-year-old wideout in his reunion with the quarterback who helped make Branch the MVP of Super Bowl XXXIX.
“I wish every receiver had the opportunity to play with this guy,” Branch said of Tom Brady. “You truly see a champion when you watch Tom play, and it rubs off on everybody.’'
In other words, Branch won’t be telling Brady to get a haircut. Of course, that’s something Branch never would have said to his last quarterback, either. But for entirely different reasons.