Last week, Patriots V.P. of player personnel Nick Caserio didn’t slam the door on a possible trade of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. Adam Schefter of ESPN now has.
Per Schefter, a Garoppolo trade is “not happening.”
This doesn’t mean the Patriots would have never traded Garoppolo under any set of circumstances. It means that none of the potentially interested teams (like the Browns, or maybe the Browns) will be making the Patriots an offer they can’t refuse.
As PFT understands it, Patriots coach Bill Belichick has decided that, for 2017, he wants Garoppolo to serve as Tom Brady’s No. 2, and that Belichick will worry about 2018 when 2018 comes. As a practical matter, however, Belichick would have to at least consider whether to depart from that plan if offered enough to get him to stop and think. Appearing last week on PFT Live, Tom Curran of CSN New England said that it would take multiple first-round picks to get Belichick to change his plans.
So if none the potentially interested teams (like the Browns, or maybe the Browns) are willing to put multiple first-round picks on the table, a trade isn’t happening. Which means that, come next year, Belichick will have to decide whether to let Garoppolo walk via free agency, whether to try to sign him to a bridge deal pending Brady’s retirement, or whether to use the franchise tag, either to keep Garoppolo for 2018 or to set up a Matt Cassel-style trade.
These decisions are all being made against the backdrop of the possibility that Father Time will at some point in the next 12 months whack Tom Brady over the head with Father Time’s weapon of choice (I can never remember what it is — sickle, scythe, big-ass hourglass, chainsaw, and/or nunchucks).