More details have emerged in the hours since Baker Mayfield's agent revealed that the Patriots were willing to trade up to No. 2 to take the Oklahoma quarterback had he still be on the board.
"We knew the Jets at No. 3 was the bottom line," Jack Mills, Mayfield's agent, said during an appearance on former NFL executive Andrew Brandt's podcast. "We had another team -- which is going to surprise you -- another team had said, 'You may get a big surprise on draft day at No. 2 if [Mayfield] is available.' It was the Patriots. They had (No.) 23 and they had (No.) 31, and they had two seconds, and I don't know. We thought, boy, that's going to be a heck of a move to get up that high from where they are. And of course, he wasn't available so we never knew if that was a reality or not."
According to NBCSportsBoston's Michael Giardi, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was a huge Mayfield fan.
And TheMMQB.com's Albert Breer reported that the Patriots were originally denied an opportunity to meet with Mayfield, presumably because they weren't picking until No. 31, long after Mayfield was expected to be drafted. But after the Patriots acquired the No. 23 pick in a trade with the Rams for Brandin Cooks, everything changed. The Athletic's Jeff Howe reports that McDaniels told Mayfield's camp that the Pats were thinking about packaging their draft picks to move up to No. 2. Mayfield finally agreed to the meeting and the two sides got together last week.
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Breer adds that several teams that brought Mayfield in for a visit were aware that Mayfield's camp thought the Patriots' interest in the quarterback was genuine.
So why were the Patriots so enamored of Mayfield, who is only 6-foot-1 and doesn't pass the eyeball test for what a prototypical NFL quarterback is supposed to look like? Because, according to Breer, Bill Belichick has stated repeatedly that the two most important qualities in an quarterback are accuracy and decision-making. Mayfield, by all accounts, was the best in the draft class in both categories.
This bodes well for the Browns, who took Mayfield with the first-overall pick. Meanwhile, this is terrible news for the Bills, who traded up from No. 21 to No. 12 before the draft, and then from No. 12 to No. 7 on Day 1 to get Josh Allen, he of the 56.3 completion percentage last season at Wyoming.
What remains unanswered is why, if the Patriots were in the market for a franchise quarterback to succeed Tom Brady, they didn't just keep Jimmy Garoppolo. A year ago, the word on the street is that it would take two first-round picks to pry him out of New England. By October, the 49ers got Garoppolo for a second-rounder, and after a few weeks learning a new offense, he won five straight games and parlayed his performance into a five-year, $137.5 million extension.
It's also unclear how, exactly, the Patriots would've gotten to No. 2. For starters, the Giants didn't sound like they were interested in moving out of the pick. There's also the matter of Mayfield's popularity among NFL teams, which wasn't well known about the media and fans in the days leading up to the draft. Put another way: New England would've had a lot of competition for Mayfield.
It didn't happen, of course. Instead, he Browns have their latest franchise quarterback, and the Patriots still have 41-year-yold Tom Brady, who maintains he wants to play until his mid-40s.
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