Jimmy Garoppolo will not have a larger-than-life image of Tom Brady looking over his shoulder next Sunday after all.
The New England Patriots planned to remove the massive Brady banners from the Gillette Stadium lighthouse Sunday night, team president Jonathan Kraft said during 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Week 1 pregame show.
The team raised the banners last Sunday — one day after Brady began serving his four-game Deflategate suspension — and they were a popular topic of discussion in Foxboro throughout the week.
“(Sunday night), when the game kicks off at 8:30, there’s a construction crew that’s assembled down at Gillette, and right as the game kicks off and the season starts, the banner and the numbers will come down, because Tom would be the last person — no one in the organization, Tom leading the pack — would want anything to take away once the games had started,” Kraft told The Sports Hub, as transcribed by the Boston Herald’s Adam Kurkjian.
“But this was a way to let him know that everybody loves him and has his back and we don’t feel that he was treated fairly. ”
The Patriots opened the regular season on the road Sunday, visiting the Arizona Cardinals on “Sunday Night Football.” They will be home for Weeks 2 through 4.
Garoppolo, Brady’s backup for the past two seasons, is expected to start all four games at quarterback for New England before Brady becomes eligible to return in Week 5.
UPDATE (9:40 p.m. ET): And down they go.
Thumbnail photo via Jim Dedmon/USA TODAY Sports Images
