Are people really convinced that Garoppolo is a top five QB?
I mean, eventually he may well be but at present?
No, he's not. At present, he's not even close. Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Carr, Stafford, Ryan, Watson, Wilson, Rivers, Wentz, Goff, Big Ben, Mariota, Winston and on and on...
I kind of alluded to this in my post earlier, and I'm not going to respond to everyone individually, but I'll just bring up this part of it again:
Jimmy may very well turn into a great quarterback. Or he could turn into Matt Flynn, RG3, Nick Foles, Daunte Culpepper or a million other guys that lit the world on fire for 3 games, or even a couple seasons, and then turned into shit. Who the fuck knows?
It is wrong, absolutely wrong, to compare Jimmy to those other guys. Yes, he hasn't played that much, which is like them. But he's also been here for 3.5 years, stepped up when needed, and - based on what Bill said about him at the trade press conference and the Patriots' unwillingness to trade him until now - has the confidence of the Pats' brain trust in a way that "Matt Flynn, RG3, Nick Foles, Culpepper, or a million other guys" never came close to. While DOTB's whole post was a very good articulation of the trade Jimmy view, this specific "only 3 games" argument I'm quoting is just flat wrong, it is a straw man.
Eddie, I thought i was pretty clearly not talking about just 3 games. That's a straw man. There have been guys that lit the world on fire for a lot longer than 3 games, or 5 games or whatever Jimmy has played, and then turned to shit. My NFL knowledge doesn't just date back 10 years, I remember a lot of names besides these:
Mark Rypien was incredible for a year in Washington, led them to a Super Bowl, and was MVP of that game. Gets hurt the next year and sucks for the rest of his career.
Scott Mitchell got the starting job in Detroit, after taking over for Marino in Miami, and was expected to be the savior, and for an entire season, he was. Then he turned into Scott Mitchell.
Anyone remember Derek Anderson in Cleveland in 2007?
Elvis Grbac, Jake Delhomme, Josh Freeman, Marc Bulger....
This list really is endless, because I want to be clear, I'm not comparing these players to Jimmy G. I'm not taking into account their pedigree, their situation, none of it. All I'm saying is that the NFL is littered with guys, especially QB's, who came out like gang busters, and for whatever reason, injury, talent, etc., they disappeared or sucked not long after that. I used to laugh every time a new quarterback would light up the league for 3-4 weeks and everyone would rush to add them to their fantasy teams. It's like clockwork. Shit, Dak Prescott may very well be one of these guys soon. He looked better at points last year than Jimmy has looked this year, and now how's he doing?
My point with the original post was simple. We know exactly what we have in Tom Brady. And I'm sure BB and company have a pretty damn good idea for how much longer they'll have him than we do too. Rolling the dice with Jimmy and trading Tom in this league would simply be insane, without even getting into the cap implications or anything else. You just don't know until you know about a guy in the NFL.