I’m only halfway through reading the thread, trying to catch up after seeing it on the scroll at work and getting home to try to catch up.
Initial thought was ‘holy shit, whoa!’. But that was purely based on the timing. I was convinced they would move him before the previous draft and was surprised they didn’t, but seems like some of the rumored deals were (unsurprisingly) bullshit rumors.
We’ve all danced around this situation for a while now and some of us have maintained certain viewpoints. I think the following were somewhat unarguable, but regardless...they seem much more so today.
- they were never going into 2018 with both guys. They weren’t going to franchise JG and pay him twice what TB makes. It wasn’t happening. They don’t manage the cap like that.
- despite trade rumors, it makes more sense to keep the franchise tag open for Butler. This has only been made more evident by the play of Gilmore so far.
- the reported deals offered were likely smoke.
- Brady has no intentions of retiring anytime soon, not in any reasonable timeframe to consider JG his successor, at least.
- kraft would never trade Brady. That’s the line in the sand for him with BB and player moves. If BB were being scrupulous BB, get rid of everyone a year too early before a year too late, and he truly thought JG was the future, this wouldn’t have happened. It happening tells us that TB12 is the exception to the rule. He’s considered a son, he’s a top 3 NFL player of all time and he built this dynasty. He writes his own ticket. The people that thought they would trade him were laughably naive. I especially liked the idea of him going to play in Jax. That one was great.
- BB will be heading out on the TB bandwagon. There’s a reason Patricia and McDaniels have stuck around. There’s a reason he’s moved into gfin mode. There’s a reason he made a trade like this. Were he planning to stick around, moves would have been made to try to find a way to extend it all, long term, like he always has. But his trades and signings have made a stark contrast to his MO. This should have sent up signs to a lot of people wishing he’d be here forever. Yet what was ignored was his frank statements that he wasn’t going to be Marv Levy. For some reason it was thought that he was bluffing on that one.
Honestly the biggest thing that shocks me is that he moved JG and* Brissett and leaving cupboard bare. Hoyer is a perfectly cromulent backup for the rest of the year, but I also don’t expect him to leave the franchise barren. Which means if he’s not planning on using the picking for a defensive upgrade tomorrow, it’s targeted at a future qb. Which is fine, it just seems like he’d stagger it and have moved JG earlier and kept Brissett around as a transition. But, despite the cliche, we don’t know what he does and if there’s ever a coach/GM that needs the benefit of the doubt on evaluation, it is in fact him. It doesn’t need to be reduced to a sarcastic ‘in Bb we trust’ because wtf do we know?