It's a Bad Day for the 'Patriots Should've Kept Jimmy G' Crowd
I’ve finally semi-gotten an answer to a question I started asking right about October of 2016. When people first got a look at Jimmy Garoppolo as an NFL quarterback for six amazing quarters and he went from the guy they wasted a perfectly good 2nd round pick on, (and yes, that was the consensus reaction to them drafting for a good two seasons; I’m not about to let people forget that) to “Thank God they have a backup now that Brady is suspended” until finally morphing into the Indispensable Next Great Franchise Quarterback. All in the span of weeks.
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?” Because once he hit the final year of his rookie deal and showed promise as an NFL starter the floor for him was Kirk Cousins money. The FLOOR. $23 million, minimum. 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.
With Brady winning the league MVP, throwing for a 500 yards and a 115 PR in the Super Bowl against an elite defense, you were going to have to put him out to stud and replace him with a guy who at this point would still only have those same six quarters from 2016 on his resume because he wouldn’t have replaced Brady prior to this. And oh, by the way, would be taking up $27 million of your cap space Next year. As opposed to Brady who’ll soon be signing another team-friendly extension.
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. Men like Jimmy G are Alphas. They don’t work hard all their lives to finally get their shot only to pass it up to hold a Microsoft tablet. They don’t come this far just to come this far. He wanted to play. The Patriots could only let him play by showing Tom Brady the door today. But the GOAT blew up any thought of that by cheating professional death. So that shot to start and make huge amounts of money had to come elsewhere. Which is what I’ve been saying all along. Being right all the time never gets old.