2016-2017 Patriots' Season Thread

More like got us a bunch of extra picks.  With Brady saying he wants to play to mid forties and still playing at an elite level, you were never going to keep Garrapolo.  After next year, some team would have given him a contract Pats weren't going to pay.  He would have wanted a chance to start and left.  You ride out Brady till he breaks down. I really like the kid, but i don't see a future Rodgers, more like a Tony Romo.  A good QB, but not an truly elite guy.  So you take the picks, make current team better and see if Brady can win a couple more titles.

You're basing all your "expertise" off a game and a half of Jimmy G. and a couple of games which Brisset shouldn't of been playing in to begin with. Talk about short sample size. You're also assuming Brisset doesn't get better going forward at reading defenses, which is very short sighted.

Brisset also has size and better athleticism over Jimmy G. to go along with the arm.

Not at all.  That's part of it, the other part is what they did in College and there draft reports.  I really like Brissett, but at this point Jimmy clearly has more arm talent.  

Go back and look at the draft reports.  Jimmy put up massive numbers, but his size and level of competition were red flags.  Could he do that against better competition.  He's proven he can.  He can make all the throws, has a quick release and just has complete control of offense.  He didn't just look good, he looked a lot like Brady.  Taking what D gave him.  He looked like a true Vet.

Brisset has everything you want in a prospect, he's just rawer and is inconsistent with his throws.  I actually love his control of offense, he was very good at that for a rookie.  Sure he can get better at reading defenses and other things.  You just don't know if he become a guy that makes all the throws, all the time.  He never did that in college, like Jimmy did.

He's proven nothing but the fact that he put up good numbers in a short sample size. Matt Flynn says hello to this.

And stop it with the Brady comparisons, it's borderline asinine.

Can he perform in this system? Probably

Will he ever be a top 10 QB in this league?

The jury is still out. Sorry. No short sample will change this until he puts in a year or two at the QB position.

Edit- Go look up Brady Quinn's college write up. None of that garbage matters when translating to the NFL.

The ONLY comparable to Tom Brady is Joe Montana. I hate it when someone sees something new and shiny in the room and compares it to the guy he just replaced. Doesn't work that way.

It's like anyone comparing any undersized right handed starting pitcher with a above average change up (like Severino for example) to Pedro Martinez. It's stupid. You lose credibility for mentioning it and well again it's stupid.

One last thing I'll mention on the Jimmy G. trade speculation is that the Patriots need to trade Jimmy to rebuild the defense. Hightower looks like he's gone with all the "I'm looking forward to my next contract" talk he just talked about this week. Ninkovich, Hightower, Harmon, Chung, Logan Ryan, Chris Long, and probably more are free agents after this game. The Patriots every pick possible. The only guy I think they're resigning long term is Butler is because they hold leverage on him as a restricted free agent.

I don't care about college stats. Brady Quinn was a what number 7 pick out of college? Time Tebow won a Heisman award!!! That should tell you all you need to know about college. I could care less. Rarely do college QB's ever translate to the NFL, and yes the arm, athleticism, and size are the tools that translates to NFL.

I don't care if you compared Jimmy G. to Tom Brady or not. They don't even belong in the same sentence, so stop mentioning anything Brady when it comes to Jimmy G.

Ohh and one last thing, I would never wish any player to turn into Tony Romo. Even if Jimmy G. doesn't stay in New England, that would be a horrible thing for him to turn into. That means he would turn into a choking diva who pukes on himself when every important game is on the line.

Bill Belichick brought up Brady earlier this year when talking about Jimmy so yelling at a poster for doing the same feels a bit wrong to me.

"we have a good quarterback in Jimmy [Garoppolo] and Jimmy can go out there and run everything that Tom can run. We’ve seen that, so I’m not saying that he’s not capable or qualified to do it. He is, and he does a great job of it and when we put Jimmy in there it’s really seamless. Unless you were actually looking at the position, if you just could block out that position and say which guy was in there at quarterback, I don’t know if you would know a lot of times.“

So just saying.... the fact you like Brisett better is buried in some deep personal preferences and not actual evidence. That's fine you may be right, but there are a lot of reports that teams highly covet Garoppolo and it's not because he put up good numbers in a game and a half. It's because of how he commanded the offense like a veteran. Turn on the film and you see how he diagnosed defenses and made the right checks at the line of scrimmage. His first TD pass to Hogan on the surface gets written off as a great throw but to a wide open receiver. What's often overlooked is that Jimmy read the defense and checked to that play to cause that situation by moving the safety. There are a lot of other examples of this and the Pats didn't run a watered down defense with him they ran everything they would have run with Brady and it was seemless for that period of time, however short it may have been.

There is a quote from at least one GM who said he'd trade he number 1 overall pick for Jimmy.

I agree, by getting rid of Jones and Collins they can now easily keep most of D together.

I don't see Hightower or Butler going anywhere. Same with Branch. Ryan is gone if he gets a big offer, but I feel that's why we got Rowe.

Bennett is the guy I worry about losing.

So we don't need the picks to rebuild D. A high first rounder could help make D elite though. With Brady getting older it would be great if we could build an elite D to take pressure off Brady.

Amendola had his contract reworked to start the season. I think he's making the league minimum.

If you franchise Hightower, then you risk the player holding out for a huge contract.

This team is about to lose a lot of players, maybe they keep 3 players from that list but I don't see anymore than that staying. Bill always isn't afraid to turn over a roster and make the unpopular decisions.

Amendola's contract was only reworked for this season, not for next season, so he'll either need to be rewilling to rework it again or likely be cut. Harmon and Ryan both fall into that middle class of player that the Patriots are willing to pay for (think Sheard or Cannon or Chung), so there's a chance they'll stay, but only if no other team shows particular interest in them (possible, but not likely).

It's funny that we're a couple days before the Super Bowl and there's more talk about the offseason than about the game. I'm excited about seeing how two very gifted offenses will approach two flawed but smart defenses. Two players to watch, one on each side: Dion Lewis (I think he'll get a good number of touches on offense, both running the ball and receiving, and he'll also get a number of touches as a kick returner) and Patrick Chung (they'll play big nickel as their base defense, and Chung will need to be able to cover and tackle Atlanta's running backs).

Well Cannon already got extended. Amendola already took a pay cut to stay once and he seems to love it here so I think he'd be willing to take a cut again. It's just the most interesting off season for the Patriots in a very long time.

I'm looking forward to the game, hard to speculate what happens in any one singular game. The Patriots can tackle well. This gives me hope that they can contain enough to win. I mean really, this might be the key to the whole game outside of the obvious answer of no turnovers or key injuries.

These things stand out for me about Atlanta. Offense is very good with a lot of weapons. Thing is they haven't ran well the last two weeks, getting about 3.5 yards a carry. While D is giving up over 4.5 in last two games. They are plus 4 in TOs, not having a single TO. They have also got things like a safety against Seattle, that was a Seattle mistake, not a great play by D. Everything has gone there way.

If Pat's get a lead and don't turnover the ball, I just don't see them getting beat. They will do what Atlanta has been doing for last two games, run the ball, maintain the clock and keep the ball away from other team.

Pat's are very good against the run, so I can see Atlanta getting away from it if they get down. Thus doing exactly what Pats want. I trust our D a lot more than there's.

I'm going to predict a 34-24 Pats win! Also it wouldn't surprise me if a few Atlanta TOs cause Pats to win big.