There are three main figures in the Patriots’ present. One owns the team. One coaches it. And one quarterbacks it.
And if we’re going to start in on the future of the franchise, and where we go in the wake of Friday’s bombshell report from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, it has to begin there.
The owner, Robert Kraft, is clearly going nowhere. The quarterback, Tom Brady, isn’t either, not after the Jimmy Garoppolo trade that left Brady as the only long-term option for the team at the game’s most important position, and not with his desire, at 40, to play another half-decade in the NFL.