No, Tom Brady, Drew Brees or Philip Rivers Aren’t Going to Quarterback Your Sorry Team

BY ADAM GREENE

I know what you’re doing. You’ve hit Sporttrac’s Free Agent site every day, looking at that quarterback list and there’s Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers and you just start dreaming.

You see, in your mind’s eye, Drew Brees easing under center for the Cincinnati Bengals. Your imagination soars as Tom Brady steps his foot down in shotgun, asking for the snap from Jacksonville Jaguars center Brandon Linder. You can picture easily Philip Rivers rolling out with the Indianapolis Colts horseshoe on the side of his helmet, firing a dart to T.Y. Hilton.

Listen, my friend. It ain’t gonna happen.

Let’s start with Brady and Rivers because their fates, in any realistic scenario, are linked. Brady will be 43 when the next NFL season begins and still wants to play. He’s a free agent for the first time in his career and that means that he can play anywhere.

Only, here’s the thing. He won’t play anywhere. You’re not going to see him trot out wearing No. 12 for the Chicago Bears or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He will not be coming out of the tunnel amidst the fake smoke wearing a Miami Dolphins uniform.

Only two teams have a shot at fielding Tom Brady next season and one of them is the Patriots. New England owner Robert Kraft has publicly stated the team plans on keeping Brady. As much as they liked rookie Jarrett Stidham in the preseason, nobody’s ready to hand him the keys just yet. There’s not a solid succession plan with the Patriots and if Brady wants to keep playing, New England is his most likely landing spot.

But, as Yoda ominously said to Obi-Wan’s force ghost in The Empire Strikes Back, there is another.

The only team that can throw a wrench into Kraft’s works in keeping Brady is the Los Angeles Chargers. Brady is done with Boston. He’s done with winter and with snow unless he’s hitting the slopes with his supermodel wife. He wants to live in L.A. and the Chargers, as you can see by the free agency of Philip Rivers, are suddenly vacant a quarterback.

If Brady doesn’t play in New England, it’ll be in Los Angeles with the Chargers. If your team is not one of those two teams, then you’re out of the Brady “sweepstakes.”

But what about Rivers, you say? If he’s no longer a Charger, surely he can run Matt Nagy’s offense in Chicago while Mitchell Trubisky runs up a high score playing Fruit Ninja on his Surface tablet.

Again, not gonna happen.

If Rivers isn’t under center in 2020 for the Chargers, he won’t be under center for anybody. He didn’t even want to play in L.A. He wanted the team to stay in San Diego so he wouldn’t be hours away from his obscenely horny wife and their 18 children or whatever. If he’s not playing for the Los Angeles AFC franchise, he’ll retire. The only new team you’ll see Rivers join is Rich Eisen’s on the NFL Network.

What about Brees? He wanted to be a free agent so bad he had a clause in his last contract that the New Orleans Saints couldn’t franchise him.

Nope. Forget it.

Brees is like Rivers. He’ll play for the Saints or he’ll play for nobody. I’m betting he had that clause in his contract (and will again) to keep New Orleans from sticking him with some Mike McCarthy if they ever decide to stupidly part ways with Sean Payton, which almost happened a few years ago.

If Brees isn’t wearing No. 9 for the Saints, he’ll be wearing a sport coat next to Joe Tessitore or Jim Nantz. He will not be firing passes to Mike Evans will dodging stippers’ g-strings in Tampa.

Oh, and one more thing now that I’ve got your wheels turning as you disappointedly look down that free agent list, don’t even think about Ryan Tannehill. Tennessee is going to franchise him if they can’t get a contract done before free agency hits.

So move on. And maybe start talking yourself into Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota.

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