For the second time in three years, the Patriots have added a rookie quarterback through one of the first 100 picks in the draft. And yet Tom Brady has not yet demanded to be traded.
The latest rookie comes via round three, pick 91. Jacoby Brissett, from N.C. State. After Friday night’s session, V.P. of player personnel Nick Caserio explained the reasoning.
“The whole quarterback position, we only had two on the team, so we were definitely going to add a third quarterback, no question about it at some point, whether it was in the draft or however we did it,” Caserio said. “Jacoby was a guy we spent a lot of time with. We brought him in, kind of went through exercises with him. He started his career at Florida then transferred to North Carolina State. Two-year starter in the ACC, big guy, good size, athletic, strong, did a better job of taking care of the football this year, decent touchdown to interception ratio. He played in a couple quality programs.”
Asked whether and to what extent Brady’s four-game suspension factored into the decision, Caserio tiptoed.
“Like I said, we have two quarterbacks on our roster so we knew we were going to add a third quarterback, regardless of whatever the situation was,” Caserio said. “So very rarely have we gone through a spring with two quarterbacks. Sometimes we’ve had three, sometimes we’ve had four. So we knew we were going to have a third quarterback on the team regardless. That’s always an important position on your team. We felt that it was important for us to have a player that we felt comfortable with. So that’s why we picked Brissett.”
A reporter tried a different approach to the ady-Bra uspension-say, asking Caserio how comfortable he is with the quarterback depth chart for the first four games.
“Well, we’ll go through the spring,” Caserio said. “We’ll kind of go through the process and see what happens. The only thing we can control really is tomorrow and the draft and then we’ll go through OTAs. The rest of it is really out of our hands. We’ll control the things that we can control and go through and try to prepare our team the best we can.”
Even with Brissett, it’s hard to imagine the Patriots embarking on Brady’s four-game suspension without a veteran presence behind 2014 second-rounder Jimmy Garoppolo. If anything, Brissett is poised to become the next potential in-house successor to Brady, if/when the Patriots trade Garoppolo before he becomes a free agent, like they did with Ryan Mallett.