As the football-following world tries to figure out what the Patriots will do with quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, our good friend John McClain of the Houston Chronicle has a theory.
If the Patriots decide to try to trade Garoppolo, they’ll quite possibly call the Texans.
If the Patriots think Garoppolo is destined to become a franchise quarterback, I’m not so sure they will. The Texans have plenty of the pieces in place to become a championship contender. Why would the Patriots want to give them the one thing they’re missing the most?
While not in the same division, the Patriots and Texans will compete for playoff seeding, if the Texans ever become as good as they can be. The smarter move for the Patriots would be to trade Garoppolo out of the conference, ideally to a team that has a long way to go to become the kind of team that the Patriots may encounter in the Super Bowl.
From Houston’s perspective, trading for Garoppolo is a luxury they can’t afford. With $16 million in fully-guaranteed compensation due and owing to Brock Osweiler in 2017, the Texans will have a hard time paying Garoppolo the kind of long-term deal he’d want in order to make the trade something other than a one-year rental followed by a Kirk Cousins-style game of franchise tag.
This entire topic arises from the notion that the Patriots would even be willing to move Garoppolo. They should be willing to move him only if they’ve concluded that, come 2018, he’ll move on as a free agent (or if they secretly think he’s not very good and they’re looking to fleece someone).
If the Patriots can persuade Garoppolo to wait for Tom Brady to retire, it all becomes moot. So when Peter King of TheMMQB.com slides into his latest column a 13-word reference to his belief that Garoppolo won’t be traded, the end result could indeed be that Brady’s final handoff will entail giving his job to Garoppolo.