Listen, I think a couple of things have been misunderstood here. And in conversations with sources familiar with the talks with a number of teams …
Number one, this notion that the Patriots aren’t willing to give up a first-round pick, there’s a difference between giving up this year’s first-round pick, which is No. 31, and next year’s first-round pick, which was also part of the discussion, because that’s an unknown. You don’t know what that pick is going to wind up being. Potentially, it could be a lot higher. You already know that the pick this year, well, it can’t get much worse, it’s at the back end of the first round. Basically, for a lot of teams, that’s considered a second-round pick, because this is a bit of a thin draft. That’s one.
The other thing that I have come to understand is that Howie Roseman — and this shouldn’t really come as a surprise — was trying to be creative about these negotiations with teams and say ‘Well, could we do sort of a split deal? Like, do half the deal now?’ And then what [Rapoport] was talking about, finish the rest of the deal after June 1st, this way it’s not as bad against the team’s salary cap immediately. They can spread A.J. Brown’s hit moving into the future. Teams were saying ‘No, no, no. You do trades all at one time. That’s how it works.’
But Roseman’s trying to be creative because this is a tough situation for him. He can trade him after June 1st to help with the salary cap implications but he’s got to carry that number for now and then other teams are going to move on and say, ‘Well, we’re not getting A.J. Brown, we’re doing other things.’ So, that market could dry up even further. It’s a very complicated one. Roseman’s trying to find a solution. We’ll see if he can before the start of the league year. If not, this will be something around the draft, and maybe even in the future we’ll talk about.