WHO’S NEXT? OPEN QB QUERY FOR PATS
Future is cloudy as ever
The Teddy Bridgewater sweepstakes is underway, or so it seems.
The quarterback is still a member of the New York Jets, but with rookie Sam Darnold expected to be the starter for the season opener and 39-year-old veteran
Josh McCown (and his $10 million contract) the more logical backup, the thinking is the Jets might ultimately deal Bridgewater.
It makes sense. He’s an asset and he will bring a healthy return, especially seeing what desperate teams handed over for quarterbacks in the past. Only two years ago, the Vikings surrendered a first-round pick and a conditional fourth-round pick to the Eagles for Sam Bradford after then-starter Bridgewater suffered his career-threatening knee injury during practice.
Already, the rumor mill has been churning. Early in the week, there were reports at least two teams had expressed interest in Bridgewater, who has looked good in the preseason after missing most of the last two years.
Who wouldn’t want a 25-yearold quarterback with Bridgewater’s upside? The list of potential suitors for the former first-round pick should grow considerably with time, and yes, that list would include the Patriots.
The Patriots are in a significant hole when it comes to their future quarterback.
They traded their successor for
Tom Brady, Jimmy Garoppolo, to San Francisco for a second-round pick. They moved Jacoby Brissett before that. They had plenty of pick capital in this year’s draft, but didn’t move up the board for any of the top prospects. Instead, they selected Danny Etling in the seventh round, and he doesn’t look like the answer.
So as far as an heir, the cupboard is bare. And if anyone thinks the Jets will just gift wrap an heir for their AFC East rivals, they’re delusional.
The Patriots only shot is if Bridgewater reaches free agency next year. Or, they find a way to go through a third party.
“There’s no way I can see the
Jets flipping Bridgewater to New England,” said ESPN analyst Damien Woody, who played for both the Patriots and the Jets. “There’s no way they’d help out a rival in the division, much less the Patriots. I don’t see that happening, at all. They’re going to flip Bridgewater at some point, but it won’t be to anyone in the division.”
Even Belichick acknowledged Wednesday that while the Patriots have good relationships with all the teams in the league, they don’t do a lot of transactions “in the AFC East.”
There’s also little chance of the Jets cutting Bridgewater when rosters are pared to 53 on Sept. 1. He’s too valuable, plus they have the cap space to keep Darnold, Bridgewater and McCown.
According to the New York Daily News, Bridgewater is on a one-year, $6 million deal that includes $9 million in performance incentives, but the money he could potentially earn by completing those incentives would count toward the 2019 salary cap.
“Quarterback is the most valuable commodity on the team. You’d rather keep all three. Quarterbacks go down, that’s when trades happen,” said Woody. “There’s no need to pull the trigger now. This quarterback situation in the league, someone’s going to get hurt unfortunately. And, that’s how these things happen.”
You can bet the Broncos will be in there making a bid. Perhaps also the Jaguars, who based on last season don’t trust Blake Bortles. There will be others as injuries pop up.
All the Patriots can do is sit and wait, or hope the trade price is too high for Bridgewater and he hits free agency. As it is, based on the contract sweetener they just gave Brady, they’re going year to year with him.
That doesn’t erase the obvious: They still don’t have the next guy. The quarterback to take the baton from Brady when he finally makes his exit or if he gets hurt.
“Tom has been healthy, but they’re playing with house money,” said Woody. “He’s 41, god forbid, something happens, and he gets hurt. You got to play with Brian Hoyer? That’s a scary proposition.”
Well, it was scary with Jimmy G too until he showed he could handle it. When Brady served his four-game suspension at the beginning of the 2016 season, Garoppolo showed enough in the first two games to inspire a legion of believers before an injury derailed him.
Moving to the present, Hoyer is best described as a ser- viceable backup. He knows the Patriots offense. He’s fine in a pinch.
And if Brady got hurt for the year, they might get by with him and still make it to the postseason thanks to a weak division. It’s just hard to have any confidence past that point. When Hoyer was in Houston, he threw four picks and had five turnovers against the Chiefs, his lone playoff experience. Not his finest moment to say the least.
Would Bridgewater be any better? He has yet to perform in the postseason, but he’s young, highly skilled and still has a promising future ahead of him. It’s more a matter of acquiring someone like him, or trying to find another Garoppolo in the draft.
Other teams with aging NFL quarterbacks took the plunge. The Steelers appear to have snagged the heir for 36-yearold Ben Roethlisberger, drafting Oklahoma State’s Mason Rudolph. Joe Flacco is 33, but the Ravens grabbed a potential successor with Lamar Jackson at No.32, taking the former Louisville quarterback one spot after the Patriots took running back
Sony Michel.
Next year’s draft class isn’t supposed to be littered with as many top quarterback prospects as 2018, when five (Baker Mayfield, Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen, Jackson) went in the first round. NFL Network analyst
Charles Davis put it in perspective.
“Right now, people are looking at this group and measuring it versus the one we just had and finding it wanting a little bit,” he said when reached last week. “But I’m not at the stage of, they’re definitely not (as good). Let’s see the season play out ... I just want to pump the brakes both ways on it. Let these kids play the season out. There’s a little more talent out there than they’re given credit for. But they’ll have to play their way into that situation.”
Missouri’s Drew Lock, Auburn’s Jarrett Stidham, N.C. State’s Ryan Finley, Oregon’s Justin Herbert, Michigan’s Shea Patterson, West Virginia’s Will Grier, Northwestern’s Clayton Thorson, North Dakota State’s Easton Stick, Florida State’s Deondre Francois and Mississippi State’s
Nick Fitzgerald are some of the names that have drawn attention. They just aren’t moving the needle like last year’s stable. Once the college season gets going, that might change.
As it is, the Patriots are going to need to address this situation before too long. How they go about doing it, whether by trade, free agency, draft, is anyone’s guess.
Edelman ready to add
Asked Julian Edelman about a couple of scenes we witnessed when the media was still allowed to watch the full training-camp practices.
Edelman, of course, is coming back from ACL surgery on his right knee. He’s looked good. But there was one occasion, after getting accidentally undercut while running a route and making a catch, he came back to the line, flexing that knee. He wasn’t quite the same in practice after that. There was another time he stumbled on a slippery patch of grass.
How much panic flashed through his mind during those episodes? Edelman laughed.
“You need to feel those stresses. You get up, and obviously, psychologically, you’re going to wonder, ‘Am I alright?’ ’’ said Edelman, speaking with the Herald at his locker on Wednesday. “But, everything’s strong. Everything’s good.”
Part of coming back from an ACL injury and surgery is wondering if the knee will survive everything, from the simplest stumble to the hardest collision.
“It’s the first week, getting out there in a preseason game, going out there and hitting someone,” said Edelman. “Then it’s the second week, you’re getting some catches, and getting hit in the open field. It’s all that, it’s falling on it in practice.”
It’s dealing with flashes of pain and occasional swelling, knowing most of it is normal. It’s learning there’s no need to panic.
“Without a doubt. It’s amazing, they have so much data now. They have a lot of stuff to base what your swelling should look like, what your pain should be, this and that,” said Edelman, “but it’s just getting your mind and your body confident. That’s what training camp is for.”
It sounds like he’s not getting too wrapped up in whatever swelling and pain charts there might be for players returning from ACL surgery. As long as he stays in the good range, he can focus on improving.
“With injuries, it sucks. Each year in the NFL, the offseason is used to reinvent yourself and add something to your game,” Edelman said. “When you get hurt, you’re just trying to get back to what you were. It’s been a long recovery, a long year. Right now I feel like I’m at the point where I can start adding stuff back to my game. That’s as far as I can go with it.”
Stories worth sharing
Given the title, the expectation from “If These Walls Could Talk,” by Scott Zolak and former Herald colleague Jeff Howe, is for some behind-the-scenes anecdotes with respect to the five-time Super Bowl champions, and the book delivers.
The Brady chapter alone is filled with tales that further illustrate his crazy competitiveness. There are also details of Belichick pushing Brady’s buttons in practice, but more in a fun way. The book depicts Belichick once closing down practice and setting up a soccer shootout with the players. (Who says Belichick isn’t fun?) The shootout was ultimately settled by Brady and Darrelle Revis, the two megastars.
The authors then ask readers who they think won that duel. The answer is obvious, especially after you’ve read the previous dozen pages highlighting how ruthless and maniacal Brady is with “an incessant need to beat everyone at everything.”
The seven-page foreword by Drew Bledsoe makes it worth a read alone. He details the emotions and feelings of his time in New England, what it all meant to him and what it’s like for him now.
“There’s a tinge of regret that we didn’t get to see the mountaintop, but there’s definitely a sense of camaraderie in knowing that we weren’t part of the machine; we were the one who actually built it,” Bledsoe wrote, with regard to himself and the players he started with in New England in 1993. “There’s a sense of pride in building something.”
The book is set for release by Triumph Books on Oct. 2.
Meager endorsement
Interesting to see how Danny Amendola praised and/or described his new quarterback Ryan Tannehill when asked last week by the Dolphins media.
“He’s a good teammate,” Amendola said via the Palm Beach Post. “He has a bunch of athletic ability and he’s smart, so it’s been a pleasure playing with him.”
It’s nice that Tannehill is a good teammate — and those were the first words Amendola chose to describe him — but isn’t he supposed to be a “good quarterback” too? Isn’t that the point? He has ability and he’s smart. Amendola, however, stopped short of praising him as a quarterback.