Belichick Picks Up Exactly the Man He Needs to Replace Christian Gonzalez: JC Jackson RETURNS!

Well, I'll be. If this doesn't just beat all. Here I was, not 24 hours ago, trying to figure out who on the Patriots roster could possibly fill the gaping void at the cornerback spot vacated by their best player, Christian Gonzalez. And the best I could come up with was giving Jalen Mills more reps or hoping one of the Joneses can get healthy, fast:

And here GM Bill goes and gets Gonzalez's replacement, the best corner on the 2021 roster JC Jackson. For the very reasonable price of essentially nothing. A swap of late round picks. Belichick better have been wearing a mask when he made this deal, because it is absolute robbery. 

It's here that I'm obligated to admit that Jackson has not been playing well at all for the Chargers:

NE, 2018-21: 25 INTs, 28 PBUs, passer ratings against of 60.2, 35.9, 62.7, 52.4

LA, 2022-23: 1 INT, 3 PBUs, passer ratings against of 152.4, 72.0

And he was a healthy scratch two weeks ago. But when a cornerback who is elite enough to have landed a 4-year, $82.5 million, $40 million guaranteed deal in free agency and be listed as third best on Steven Cheah's list of top corners adds exactly 100.0 passer rating points year-to-year after leaving his old team, there is some other factor at work. And after giving it a great deal of careful consideration, I have identified it:

GM Bill has given JC Jackson back to HC Bill because he knows HC Bill will get him back to his former glory. 

"Listen, Old Balls," you may be asking. "You're a handsome intellectual who is never wrong about these things, I'll grant you. But how can you sound so confident? After all, a 152.4 passer rating against is only marginally better than if you just put a traffic cone out at wide corner. How do you know Jackson hasn't simply lost the ability to play at a high level?" 

Good question. I'm confident because there is a pattern here.

I was just having this text conversation a few days ago with some friends. Listing the guys who played their best football under Belichick, left for big money, then could either never again reach those heights, or who only were able to recapture their former glory by returning to Foxboro. Deion Branch comes quickly to mind. His return in 2010 after the Pats finally cut ties with Randy Moss actually improved the offense. Kyle Van Noy's two tours of duty in New England were better than all his stints elsewhere by an order of magnitude. Trent Brown had a career year in 2018, signed with the Raiders, flamed out, and now is ranked among the best tackles in the game by Pro Football Focus. 

By the same token, the list of guys who came from nowhere, were developed into productive and very well paid pros under Belichick's tutelage only to become busts once they were no longer receiving his Jedi Master training is much longer. Trey Flowers. Malcolm Butler. Dion Lewis. Danny Amendola. I could go on. Of course you can cite Tom Brady to refute this, but he's an outlier since after just a couple of weeks of trying to run Bruce Arians' preposterous system, he scrapped the whole thing and just implemented the one Belichick taught him and he perfected. 

But enough of looking backwards. This is all about looking ahead to Sunday. And lining JC Jackson up opposite Chris Olave in single man coverage and letting him party like it's 2021 all over again. GM Bill has done it again, so that HC Bill can do it all over again. 

Though first Jackson will have to show up to court to get that traffic offense taken care of:

But if Jack Jones is any indication, cornerbacks in New England have no problem getting their legal matters cleared up.

So get well soon, Gonzalez. But in the meantime, this crisis has been resolved.