Rob Parker is no stranger to questionable takes about Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.
So, it should come as no surprise that Parker again sounds way off-base when discussing Brady’s impending free agency.
The polarizing pundit suggested Tuesday on FS1’s “Undisputed” that New England has “zero interest” in re-signing Brady this offseason, which obviously flies in the face of both conventional wisdom and what Patriots owner Robert Kraft has gone on record as saying.
“I think the Patriots have zero interest in Tom Brady from this standpoint: Tom Brady told the world, ‘I want to play until I’m 45 years old.’ They gave him a bogus contract with a little bump in pay and that last two years that were not guaranteed that even allows him to become a free agent,” Parker said. “They could’ve just said, ‘You’re not going anywhere. You will never wear any other uniform other than this,’ and just pay him the money. Pay him the back pay of all the money that they’ve siphoned from him when he took less than market value.
“When Michael Jordan was underpaid his entire career with the Bulls, you know what they did his final two years? They gave him over $30 million his last two years as a makeup for not paying him what he should’ve been paid. (The Patriots) could’ve done the same exact thing with Tom Brady. This whole notion of, ‘Go ahead and shop around and go have dinner with other people and then come back.’ I remember Detroit when Allan Houston was a free agent. The Pistons told him, ‘Yeah, go get on that private jet with the Knicks and Patrick Ewing and then you’ll come back and we’ll see what’s up.’ You know what? He never came back. When you invite somebody to go dance with somebody else or go have dinner with somebody else, they’re not coming back.”
"I think the Patriots have zero interest in Tom Brady."@RobParkerFS1 on why TB12 won't be back in New England next season pic.twitter.com/ABeVFXADlQ
— The Facility (@TheFacilityFS1) February 11, 2020
It’s definitely fair to question whether the Patriots dropped the ball with Brady’s contract. Perhaps they could’ve sweetened the pot enough last offseason to lock him up for the remainder of his career. Instead, they restructured his deal in a way that, per his request, allows him to test the open market this offseason.
It’s weird to argue the Patriots have “zero interest” in re-signing Brady, though, especially when, as Parker later notes, they don’t have an obvious fallback plan in case the six-time Super Bowl champion lands elsewhere. Wouldn’t that lack of a Plan B suggest New England is going to at least try to bring back Brady?
“Tom Brady feels it like this: He’s been disrespected, they never paid him his market value and now, ‘When I told you I want to play until 45, you didn’t even give me a contract that gave me enough years to get to 45,’ ” Parker said. “If they had Jimmy Garoppolo, then I’m with you. They don’t even have a replacement there for him, so why not pay Tom Brady, pay him for the past years that he did not get paid and keep him in that uniform for three more years?”
In some ways, Parker just proved a point conflicting his original theory — that the Patriots don’t want to re-sign Brady — and really, why should we expect anything less given his track record?
