Saying You Want a Do-Over of the Brandin Cooks Trade is a Terrible, Awful Take

I admit, watching Brandin Cooks rip the top off the Vikings defense … [considers how that will sound giving what’s happening in the country right now, rephrases] … going deep on the Vikings … [nope, try again] … catching a long touchdown pass last night [nailed it], it was inevitable that people would look at what no shows the Patriots’ receiving corps has been and immediately trace all the problems to the trade of Cooks last spring. And not too many Professional Hot Takers passed up the opportunity:

And I admit that I got caught up in the moment and used it to clap at one particular Pats wideout:

But even half in the bag at almost 10PM last night, I wasn’t about to make a case that somehow keeping Cooks would’ve been the answer to their wide receiver prayers. Or even that the trade wasn’t a good idea.

It’s easy to look at the receiving corps as it’s currently constituted and say you’d take anyone at this point. I wouldn’t object if they cleared a roster spot for Air Bud: Golden Receiver right now. But it’s intellectually lazy to retroactively say that was a terrible trade. To do so is not only revisionist history, it’s ignoring the facts.

Football personnel moves don’t happen in a vacuum. Cooks was entering the last year of his contract. Meaning they could keep him for a year and lose him for a compensatory pick, keep for a year and franchise him, pay dat man hees mon-neee, or get something for him.

Keeping him for a second season and letting him walk would’ve been terrible use of the 1st rounder they gave up to get him. Franchising him was out of the question, unless you think he’s worth somewhere around DeAndre Hopkins/Larry Fitzgerald money. Guaranteed. Which he is not. Not on this team, that built a dynasty not overvaluing the position. Keeping an re-signing him would have been financial and team-building suicide, given that the Rams gave him $90 million, $50 million of that guaranteed and a cap hit of $20 million next year, which is lunacy.

Good luck keeping Rob Gronkowski happy when you’re paying a guy who had almost identical receiving numbers but who isn’t the best blocking tight end in the league basically double in 2019 what he was making at the time. With all that guaranteed money while Gronk has been accepting incentive deals.

So what did the Patriots get for Cooks? The 23rd overall pick. A year after they used the 32nd pick to get him. That might not be sexy. It isn’t sexy. A 9-slot upgrade and a year out of a guy’s rookie deal prime doesn’t catch 50 yard touchdown bombs on a Thursday night. But moves like that are the rock upon which this castle has been built and have sustained it throughout King Belichick’s reign.

Yes, they used it to get the versatile, blue chip, pass-blocking, big school offensive lineman they were targeting and everyone had scouted so highly. And Isaiah Wynn blew out his Achilles in a fauxball game. So they have nothing to show for Cooks at the moment but cap space. But it’s disingenuous to accept all the similar moves that traded veterans for future prospects – Drew Bledsoe, Richard Seymour, Chandler Jones to name a few – to perpetuate this run of success and insist now that Brandin Cooks was somehow a Bridge Too Far because he looks good so far and Kenny Britt, Malcolm Mitchell and Jordan Matthews couldn’t stay healthy.

I’m not denying it’s a raging, black-smoke tire fire right now. And hopefully Josh Gordon and the return of Julian Edelman will douse the flames. But going back and saying you want a do-over on the Cooks trade because of it is just cheap and lazy.