Once Super Bowl LII finishes up, Tom Brady need not worry about getting out of the Midwest, because if one Detroit Free Press reporter’s column comes to fruition, the New England Patriots quarterback will be donning a different shade of blue next season.
That’s right, Free Press reporter Carlos Monarrez wrote a think piece Friday urging the Detroit Lions to swing a trade for Tom Brady in exchange for Matthew Stafford and some assets this offseason.
Monarrez’s rationale largely focuses on the Patriots having a bit more security in the future, while the Lions get put in a position to win sooner rather than later. At the base of it, a lot of this theoretically would be possible with Patriots defensive coordinator Matt Patricia reportedly set to be hired as the next head coach of Detroit.
Here’s the proposed trade:
“(Lions general manager Dan) Quinn knows (Patriots head coach Bill) Belichick, his old boss, really well,” Monarrez wrote. “Trading Brady would be enormously unpopular in New England. So Quinn would have to offer Belichick something he couldn’t refuse: immediate help and hope for the future. That would come in the form of Stafford, both a first- and second-round draft pick, and probably a high-caliber player like Glover Quin or T.J. Lang.”
Interesting.
Of course, no such column would be complete without acknowledging the ESPN story that ran in January referencing a reported rift between Brady, Belichick and owner Robert Kraft. In the column, Monarrez uses that as a way of fueling Belichick to trade Brady and win a Super Bowl without him.
“There’s disharmony on any football team,” Monarrez posited. “But I believe there’s something stronger at work in New England. Belichick has never been the warm-and-fuzzy sentimental type. If he landed Stafford, a player of Ansah’s or Quin’s caliber and some high draft picks, and won without Brady, he would prove once and for all that he and he alone had orchestrated all of the Patriots’ winning.”
Hey, sports are crazy and stranger things have happened. But it certainly feels like Monarrez is reaching quite a bit to say the Patriots would just willy-nilly trade away a quarterback who very well could win the NFL MVP this season, especially after seemingly committing to Brady by trading Jimmy Garroppolo to the San Francisco 49ers earlier this season.
