Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the rest of the New England Patriots will do everything they can to make last week’s bombshell ESPN story seem like a non-factor for them heading into Saturday’s playoff game, but they have undoubtedly discussed the report behind closed doors. Not surprisingly, it did not please the team.
Peter King of The MMQB reported on Monday that the Patriots “haven’t been as angry about anything since the Tom Brady deflated footballs scandal.” He described the team as “apoplectic,” so any talk about Belichick getting his players to ignore the noise is probably not entirely true.
Last week, King spoke with Robert Kraft about Seth Wickersham’s claim that the Patriots owner ordered Belichick to trade Jimmy Garoppolo, likely at the request of Tom Brady. Kraft vehemently denied making that decision.
“I assumed once the season started, we’d talk again at the end of the season about (Garoppolo). The next time I spoke with Bill about it was the Monday before the trade deadline,” Kraft told King. “He called me on that Monday and said he got a deal with San Francisco, Jimmy for a second-round pick and Brian Hoyer. Turns out they had to cut Hoyer and then we got him. But really, this was basically a second-round pick and Brian Hoyer for Jimmy. Bill asked me if I was OK with this. I was really taken aback a little bit. I wanted to think about it. I talked to (Patriots president Jonathan Kraft), who was okay with it, and I called Bill back and said, ‘OK.’”
In his follow-up on Monday, King noted that he has known Kraft since 1994 and has never seen the 76-year-old more irritated.
I have never heard Robert Kraft more strident about anything—and that includes Spygate and Deflategate—than he was on the phone with me about the accusation that he mandated that Garoppolo be traded in a meeting with Belichick before the October trade deadline. As I wrote Saturday, Kraft said such an in-season meeting never happened. Garoppolo was dealt to San Francisco for a second-round pick on Oct. 30. Kraft’s voice rose, his ire clear sentence after sentence, as he insisted he did not tell Belichick to make the trade. I have known Kraft since soon after he bought the team in 1994, and the one thing that sets him off is someone questioning his word. That’s why this set him off.
The Patriots are going to handle this situation the same way they handle any potential distraction — by answering very few questions about it and pretending it has zero impact on their upcoming game. In reality, Belichick is a master at using these types of things as motivation, and even Brady shared a cryptic post on social media. If the Patriots go on to win yet another Super Bowl, their fans can thank ESPN’s Seth Wickersham for the extra boost.
