The Patriots Wouldn't Be Here if They'd Kept Jimmy Garoppolo. People Forget That.

Don’t let the excitement, the majesty and the pageantry of Super Bowl LIII distract you from one very crucial and overlooked point: The Patriots wouldn’t be playing in it if they’d hung onto Jimmy Garoppolo. Which so many people in New England claim they should have. Or at least did. Up until Tom Brady threw for almost 700 yards in two playoff wins.

There has been so much revisionist history on the subject of Jimmy G that this will tie people’s tails in a knot but it’s true. Let’s lay down a couple of facts, that should not be in dispute:

1. The only practical way to keep Garoppolo would have been for the Pats to have made him their starting QB this year.
2. I’ve been right about this all along.

I wanted Garoppolo traded after the 2016 season, when he filled in for a suspended Brady and looked for all the world like an NFL starter. This isn’t the NFL of the Steelers, 49ers and Cowboys dynasties. Once a guy’s contract is up, there is no mechanism for keeping a starting-caliber QB that doesn’t involve letting him start. Either for you or someone else. I might be pretty, but I can do math.

Here’s what I wrote shortly after that season when Adam Schefter reported Belichick was not interested in moving him:

There is simply no way they can keep Garoppolo after next year unless it involves doing the unthinkable with Brady. Which we will not speak of, now or ever. You can’t franchise him. [Kirk] Cousins will make $24 million this year on the tag. And the Pats wouldn’t pay that to Jimmy G to start 16 games, much less stand on the sidelines holding a Microsoft Surface. Hell, Schefter reported last week Glennon will get $13-$15 million. That would be the Mike Glennon who has a completion percentage under 60 and a YPA of 6.5. The Patriots have no shot of ever keeping Garoppolo away from that kind of crazy money.

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten so much blow back for an opinion. Obviously a trade didn’t happen during the offseason. Garoppolo was brought back for the final year of his rookie deal, then traded at the deadline. The people who can understand how to figure out Brady’s age but not how salary structure on a NFL team works in a zero-sum salary cap era kept telling me there was a way to keep both quarterbacks. And that it was a mistake to trade Jimmy G.

While I stuck to my guns. Within days of the loss to the Super Bowl loss to the Eagles I wrote this:

And my question hasn’t changed from then until today. And it is, “How much would you pay Jimmy G to sit on your bench?” … The only way you were going to keep Garoppolo was to move on from Tom Brady right now. Right this second. And put Jimmy G as your starter. Not tomorrow. Not after breakfast. Now. …

Anyway, I never once got a straight answer to that simple question of dollars and cents. Their plan was to … what? Pay him LESS than he just made and have him spend more years NOT playing? Is that how you think the world works? I’d get the vague “You can always works something out,” which is not only lazy, it’s dishonest.

The idea of franchising a backup and making him your highest paid player is bug-eyed, batshit lunacy. It would tear a team apart. Not that you’d have a team left to tear apart. Paying $50 million to one position on your roster means saying “So long, Gronk.” “Thanks for your service, McCourty.” “Nice knowing ya, Gilmore.” Best of luck winning with that roster.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t still hear it. In spite of how Brady has played getting them this far, the “But he’s 41 years old!” argument hasn’t gone away. I had a lady at one of my book signings in December tell me she’s still worried about not having Jimmy G around because, “What if Brady gets hurt?” As I took a deep breath and tried to be as polite as my sainted mom would want me to be and explained the old guy she’s worried about hasn’t missed a snap. While the young stud she wants so much went down for the year with a non-contact injury in Week 3. (Not the first injury for Jimmy Fra-G-lay, I should add.)

So flat out, if you’re still believing the Pats could’ve kept Brady and Garoppolo both, you’re dead wrong.

If you’re arguing they would’ve and should’ve made the switch to Garoppolo in 2018 and he would still have them in this Super Bowl, you’re delusional. You are playing out a hypothetical fantasy scenario in your head that is way less hypo than it is pathetical.

You’re imagining situations where he not only stayed healthy, but he was able to carry this roster to a playoff bye, a dominating performance against the Chargers and three go-ahead touchdowns in the 4th quarter and overtime on the road at Kansas City. You’re living in a dreamworld, while I’m waiting for the guy I said they needed to keep all along to start his ninth Super Bowl. Which, coincidentally, is one fewer start than your guy has in his whole career.

Right again, Old Ball. #StillHere