The New England Patriots and Tom Brady reached agreement on a two-year contract extension, the financial details of which are not yet known.
Brady, who will turn 39 before the start of the 2016 season, signed the extension which carries through the 2019 season. His cap hit in 2015 was $14 million, which ranked 14th among NFL quarterbacks. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk discussed the deal with Tom E. Curran on Quick Slants The Podcast, and said (7:15) from Brady’s end the extension may have been about self preservation.
“I don’t know how selfless he’s being here,” Florio said. “I think he’s trying to avoid getting Drew Bledsoe’d, and Bledsoe got run out of town because of the contract he had. So Tom Brady never has to worry about Bill Belichick cutting him if he’s not a guy who’s carrying an average of twenty million, twenty-two, twenty-three million dollars per year in salary, and they could go cheaper with Jimmy Garoppolo or someone else.”
“Until we see the numbers, we’re not going to be able to divine the intention behind this,” Florio said. “Maybe the main intention was to shrink the salary down to the point where if his four-game suspension gets reinstated this year, he’s only losing a couple hundred thousand dollars instead of a couple million. That’s a legitimate tactic; a legitimate planning tactic.”
The discussion eventually turned to backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who is slated to become a free agent after the 2017 season. Listen via the Sound Cloud player above or by subscribing to CSNNE on iTunes.