If the Patriots are smart, they’ll draft Jacob Eason to replace Tom Brady
By John Buhler
It shouldn’t matter if Tom Brady returns or not, the New England Patriots would be wise to draft Jacob Eason out of Washington in the first round this year.
Maybe Jacob Eason can be the New England Patriots’ next Jimmy Garoppolo?
Things are not going well between Tom Brady and the Patriots before his impending free agency. Brady has spent all 20 of his NFL seasons in Foxborough, but he may be on his way out. He wants to play until he’s 45-years-old, but the Patriots seem like they want to get younger at the quarterback position. One answer to this problem is to draft Eason in the first round this spring.
New England has the No. 23 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. While Eason is a borderline first-round talent, the Patriots won’t be able to draft him in the second round. This is because they traded the No. 55 overall pick to the Atlanta Falcons for wide receiver Mohamed Sanu. New England probably regrets it, as the Patriots won’t have their second pick in the draft until No. 87.
Not even five years ago would Eason have been the No. 1 overall pick in an NFL Draft. When he first committed to Georgia, Dawg Nation thought it was getting the second coming of Matthew Stafford. If Eason taps into all of his quarterbacking potential, he could be Stafford. However, his best pro comparison at this point of his football career is Joe Flacco coming out of Delaware.
Eason is 6-foot-6 with a powerful right arm. He can make all the throws in the AFC East climate. Though he is a tad raw coming out of Washington, the school he transferred to after losing his starting job to Jake Fromm at Georgia in 2017, Eason has the frame, arm talent and intellect to be Brady’s eventual successor in Foxborough.
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He projects as the fifth of five first-round quarterbacks entering the 2020 NFL Draft. He was a former five-star recruit coming out of Lake Stevens, Washington in 2016. While he only had two years’ worth of starting experience in college coming three years apart, there is too much potential upside for the Patriots to pass on Eason at No. 23 if he’s still on the draft board.