The Football Film Room Show Transcript with All-22 Highlights

Episode #30 - Rams Trade for Myles Garrett (Part 2)

The Patriots Trade for A.J. Brown

The other big trade that happened this week, A.J. Brown going from the Eagles to the Patriots. Again, we all knew this was going to happen. This had been talked about for a while. A.J. Brown clearly wanted out of Philly. Philly clearly wanted to move on from Brown.

Mike Vrabel was the head coach who drafted A.J. Brown. Brown grew up in the NFL with Vrabel as his coach, I guess you could say. They had some good success in Tennessee. They made it to the AFC Championship game in 2019, shocked a lot of people. And I know he said that he loved playing for Vrabel.

So off the field, that seemed like a match made in heaven, certainly from a coach-player relationship standpoint.

Now on the field, Brown obviously makes the Patriots a lot better. Last season he had a bit of a down year. That was due to, I don’t know if you’d say he necessarily lost a step, I’m not sure I would go that far. I think it had more to do with the circumstances, the offense that the Eagles ran, the quarterback he played with. He did have some uncharacteristic drops and moments, but he is still every bit a go-to, bona fide number one receiver, and that’s the type of player that the Patriots really didn’t have last year.

Stefon Diggs had a good year, some of their young receivers came on, Mack Hollins had a good season. But they didn’t have a guy like A.J. Brown who you can line up outside the numbers and anytime you see him in a one-on-one, you get him the ball, because that’s the type of player he still is:

He’s physical, has really good hands, will pluck the ball out of the air, can win at the line of scrimmage: