The New England Patriots did some remodeling on Thursday, demolishing part of their quarterback room in hopes of having a finished product in place once training camp rolls around.
If you’ve ever done an at-home project, though, you probably won’t be surprised about one question arising: Did they think it all the way through?
Joe Milton III was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for late-round draft pick compensation, according to multiple reports. Dallas will send a fifth-round pick in exchange for Milton and a seventh-round pick from New England.
We don’t want to bombard you with metaphors to HGTV, but stick with us for a moment. Milton’s departure from the roster makes sense in a lot of ways, but the timing of the deal doesn’t do much of anything but open another training camp spot and sell on a trade piece when there was a decent chance it could become even more valuable. It’s like buying a fixer-upper, doing the bare minimum to upgrade it, and selling it for a 4% ROI.
New England has been wrestling with whether or not it wanted to sell high on the young quarterback throughout the early portion of the offseason, and it needed to make the move at some point. Milton isn’t the ideal backup in this situation, because he rightfully would want an opportunity to start somewhere and has already improved his value after being taken with a sixth-round pick last offseason.
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Do we think keeping him around until August would have been an issue, though?
Yes, you’d want to cash in on a draft pick as soon as possible. We just aren’t doing backflips over a fifth-round pick, especially considering you’re sending a seventh alongside the gunslinger.
Milton could have entered the preseason as the top trade piece on the market, with each passing performance slightly improving his trade value. New England knew it was never going to keep him on as a backup long-term, but allowing him to play things out this summer could have been advantageous as you wait for teams to get desperate toward the beginning of the regular season. Don’t you think you could have gotten a fourth in that scenario?
ESPN’s Mike Reiss brought up a great point regarding the dynamic of the quarterback room, as getting rid of Milton sets up a clear order of operations with Drake Maye (starter) and Josh Dobbs (backup).
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How likely is it that we’d hear chants for Milton after a bad start or two for Maye? It’s not like we don’t have a direct comparison to point to from recent seasons.
You didn’t need to get that far, though! We don’t have an issue with trading Milton. We just don’t think this was a great way of maximizing the value that he’s built up over one year — especially considering it came under such tumultuous circumstances.
The Patriots improved their draft positioning slightly with the move, but with a new need in the quarterback room they might just use that pick to take another swing at a toolsy late-round option that could be their long-term backup. If they waited until the end of the summer, they wouldn’t need to find that third arm and might have landed themselves something better for next offseason’s draft.
Coulda, shoulda, woulda, huh?
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