The Offers the Patriots Got for the No. 3 Pick Were Insulting, Pathetic Jokes

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

I can say without fear of contradiction that there wasn't a man, woman, or child in New England who hadn't considered the possibility of the Patriots trading out of the No. 3 pick. After all, everything has a price. The Beatles' hearts were in the right place when they said "money can't buy you love." But that was 60 years before Katharine McPhee married a geezer with a helicopter on the deck of his superyacht.

Like Eliot Wolf said right after "Hello" at his predraft presser, he was "Open for Business." The Pats came into this draft with enough holes to fill the Albert Hall (second and final Beatles reference). So there was an obvious internal logic in the idea of dropping back and adding picks. With the emphasis on the aforementioned "price." Giving up on the grand plan to take Drake Maye and build around him wasn't going to come cheap. As I mentioned when Wolf turned that metaphorical "Closed" sign around the front door of his rhetorical shop, it was going to take a Godfather offer. The harder to refuse the better:

The Pats hadn't found themselves in the Top 3 in 31 years. And not in the Top 10 in 16 years. It would be franchise suicide to squander this one rare opportunity just because some other teams came waving the old Al Davis Draft Trade Value Chart (copyright 1971) in their face. But according to Mike Reiss, that's pretty much what was asked of them:

Source - [A] trade package out of No. 3 would have had to blow them away to consider moving down to the next QB options.

A source said the New York Giants had offered the No. 6 overall pick and their 2025 first-round pick, while the Vikings were ultimately willing to part with No. 11 and No. 23, along with a 2025 first-rounder, in exchange for the third pick and two mid-round selections from New England.

But clearly neither of those proposals met the criteria for the "bag" that Mayo said the Patriots would have needed to be OK with trading the pick, and explains why the Patriots called Maye immediately when they were on the clock at No. 3.

I guess it's worth going over one last time, for the Giants and Vikings in the back of the room. 2021. Miami has the third pick. San Francisco has the 12th. To make it worth the Dolphins' while to drop back, they give them that 1st and their 1st the next two years in a row. Everyone gets what they want. The Niners get the guy they mistook for their next franchise QB. The Dolphins build a contender. Thus, the market is set. The price of poker is firmly established. It's a perfect comp for all future trades up to 3.

But from the sound of it, the Giants and Vikings violated rules of haggling, established way back in Biblical times:

And to that, Wolf deserves our gratitude. Yes, we still don't know what we have in Drake Maye. And I'm going to remain skeptical of Wolf until we actually know he's built a winner. I mean, so far so good. He's extended all the best picks from the 2020 draft, plus Hunter Henry. And got proactive on one of the best 2nd rounders of the Belichick Era in Christian Barmore, a year before his rookie deal was up. To the second-highest non-Tom Brady contract they've ever given out:

And the wisdom of that signing was confirmed the second Barmore celebrated it with a Jean-Claude Van Damme post:

So to this point, it's hard to find any flaw in his plan. Sure, free agency was a little quiet. And left tackle still needs to be addressed. The lack of a true WR1 remains an issue. But at least he put together an extremely promising draft. And didn't allow himself to get suckered in by the weak cheese being offered out of New York and Minnesota. If he'd taken either of those deals I'd be among the thousands camping out under the Gillette Lighthouse refusing to leave until he was fired. But he passed the test by telling these other GMs to piss all the way off. 

I can only think they were testing him. Hoping to take advantage of a rookie in command of his first war room. Only to find out he didn't spend all that time apprenticing under his father in Green Bay and Belichick in Foxboro just to be played for a sucker now. Well done by him. The rest of the NFL should take note that "Open for Business" doesn't mean you can come in and rob the store. Good luck with your futures of Daniel Jones and JJ McCarthy, though.