So if I understand your ask.
You want to know "How could the Patriots have Kept Jimmy G".
Can I ask a retort before I answer? How much responsibility does Brady have to be 100% committed to continuing to be the Patriots QB, and how far ahead is it reasonable for him to communicate that?
A lot of responsibility. Probably communicating by March if he'll be in for the following year.
But you'll also note: we have absolutely no idea what he has communicated to the team. Those who know (Kraft, BB, McDaniels) don't say. Those who say (given our history with the boston media) clearly don't know.
Here is my "answer". (...)
So if he came in last October and said "Yea I am not sure I can commit at the same level as I have in past but I still want to play for awhile" then I think we would be foolish to believe that BB would have been ok with that and wouldnt have made the Cap work this year. Would it have hurt 2018? Definitely lots of cuts and less talent. Would it have shut the TB window a little tighter or maybe completely? Yes (and TB didnt want that...more on that in a minute). (...)
You haven't made an answer, you've punted on it. Saying "BB would have made it work" ignores basic math. You and I may not be cap experts, but people like Miguel are, and they came to the considered opinion that the >$42M price to tag JG while keeping TB would have been a crippling blow to the team's ability to field a competitive roster. There simply weren't enough available obvious cap casualties.
That was the shared conclusion of the football cognoscenti around here last Nov 1st, if you recall: faced with a surely unsolvable cap problem in trying to retain a backup QB on a franchise tag (that doesn't just
sound ridiculous to you?), and the fact that Brady had proven he was healthy and effective and likely to remain that way for 2018 (barring another Pollarding), he chose to get something for JG at the time, rather than nothing after the season. That is the Occam's Razor conclusion, because it means that we don't have to presume BB is a moron, nor presume that there was some bizarre cloak-and-dagger bullshit going on. Anyone pushing an alternative theory has the burden of proof otherwise, Seth Wickersham included.
The question is flawed. It doesnt have to be Keep them both and the team as built for championship run. Which is where LexGeorge is coming from.
It would have been EASY for the patriots to keep both Jimmy and Brady. If they committed to transitioning to Jimmys team in 2019 or 2020 and basically calling it a day on Championship aspirations for the short term. In the grand scheme of things that might have been "in the best interest of the New England Patriots" long term.
Teams somtimes do "Suck for Luck". So why do we think it would have been different to "Suck for Succession". You do things that hurt you now to set yourself up for the future.
Wait, so your counterproposal to BB's actions was, punt on the 2018 season, and waste one of the few remaining performant years of your HOF QB (who might well retire in disgust), for the sake of retaining your looks-good-but-no-sure-thing backup? Accept a 4-12 season and a roster with several massive holes on it, for the sake of keeping Garoppolo around?
Playing for the $23.2M 2018 QB franchise tag number, while riding the pine, Garoppolo would have displaced at least 4-5 impact players -
starters - from being affordable under the cap. Did you like Jordan Richards getting crunch time plays in the super bowl? Were you enjoying our CB play? Want more Cyrus Jones and less Stephon Gilmore? How did our DL look? Because you should expect that quality play or worse, with the budget cut by $23M. Go look at PatsCap or Spotrac and see what that buys you, because you might not feel it thoroughly enough if you're saying this.
Such a decision, made clearly without regard to competing in 2018, would infuriate both Brady and the entire fanbase, because it would clearly be a move they didn't have to make. The Pats would have had the rarest commodity in the game, a top QB, and had him for half his true market value. And instead of riding that to as much glory as possible, you would have them choose to plow under that rich crop, piss away a perfectly plausible season of contention, and sow the seeds for what might, several years down the line,
you hope, become something nearly as good as what you've got already?
Teams in our position ride out that position as long as they can, for both business and competitive reasons. Only when they hit the end of the line, as Seattle did after this past year, do they truly blow it up and start thinking about how to build the next contender. Belichick is known for retooling a year early rather than a year late, and often wisely so. Franchising Garoppolo to spur his team sucking, and/or his still-productive HOF QB retiring on an incredibly sour note, would be Redskins-level dumb. I can't believe that's a serious suggestion.