{"id":9542,"date":"2020-03-18T00:42:40","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T00:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=9542"},"modified":"2020-03-18T16:46:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T16:46:45","slug":"the-end-of-the-evil-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nfl\/the-end-of-the-evil-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of the Evil Empire?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY ADAM GREENE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not yet official, because actual journalists can\u2019t say it\u2019s a done deal until the ink is dry, but Tom Brady will not play as a New England Patriot in 2020. He\u2019s going to sign with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And no one in Boston can even go out and get drunk and say something racist about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After two decades of doing their best to ruin the NFL together, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick will no longer be consciously coupled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh God. It\u2019s over. Maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this incredibly weird time, this was a weirdness for which I wasn\u2019t prepared. I know the Patriots weren\u2019t either. But here we all are. What are the Pats going to do? And what will the Bucs look like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off, let\u2019s not pretend Tom Brady played that great last season. He was decent and, if he performs at that same level, you\u2019d expect him to be light years better than Jameis Winston, who became the first NFL quarterback in history to throw 30 touchdowns and 30 picks in the same season. But both guys had a QBR of 53.7 last year<\/a>, if you can believe it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quarterbacks don\u2019t decline like other players. They go off a cliff. Brady has avoided it through his alien DNA and eldritch dealings thus far, but it\u2019s coming. And it\u2019s likely to come in a Tampa uniform. Don\u2019t pencil the Bucs into your Super Bowl slot just yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while it might make your eyes light up to think of Brady tossing passes to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, he\u2019s not been an air-it-out guy for a while. Last season Brady finished 26th in the NFL in average pass distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about the Patriots? Are they going into battle with Jarrett Stidham and Cody Kessler? I don\u2019t see that happening. There are ideas out there that I like, specifically a trade for Andy Dalton or adding Jameis Winston in a defacto trade. They make me happy to think about because they would blow up in Belichick\u2019s swollen, sullen face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s an idea that I hate. And it\u2019s all the Carolina Panthers\u2019 fault as they are now officially shopping Cam Newton after reportedly reaching an agreement<\/a> with Teddy Bridgewater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Patriots should be on the phone with Carolina right now, working the deal to add Newton to their roster and that thought should scare absolutely everyone reading this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cam might not be healthy. There\u2019s got to be a reason the Panthers were so eager to toss him out. I wondered, when he released his \u201cMoment of Clarity\u201d<\/a> wearing a normal human hat and not a bedazzled sombrero that maybe his heart wasn\u2019t in playing football anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know what would fix that real quick? Suiting up for Belichick in a Pats uniform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just hope some other team swoops in to trade for a franchise quarterback that suddenly got considerably cheaper by three years and $63 million. Because if a healthy and pissed off Cam tosses on a No. 1 red-silver-blue jersey next season, we\u2019re going to be in this New England Patriots dynasty mess all over again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get the latest NFL football odds and information–follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BY ADAM GREENE It\u2019s not yet official, because actual journalists can\u2019t say it\u2019s a done deal until the ink is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9544,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542\/revisions\/9544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}