Gone, but not forgotten.
That pretty much describes how Bill Belichick feels about Jimmy Garoppolo, the quarterback he traded away last October for what seemed -- even to the team that acquired him -- a fairly inexpensive haul. In a comphrensive story on Garoppolo in Sports Illustrated, longtime NFL coach Mike Shanahan, father of current 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, called the offer of a second-round draft for Garoppolo “almost too good to be true.”
MORE ON JIMMY G.
Speculation in the story is that Belichick -- in addition to not wanting to having to face Garoppolo in the AFC -- was "determined to place Garoppolo where he’d have the best chance of success". And to cement that theory:
Last December, following the trade, a sort of weekly ritual began: After each of Garoppolo’s starts for the 49ers, he received a text from the coach who had traded him, congratulating him on another win.
“Bill really, really liked Jimmy,” said Garoppolo's mother Denise. “Not like they were warm and fuzzy -- but they both knew it was there.”
New England Patriots
The story also describes the relationship between Garoppolo and Brady ("[Jimmy] took the opportunity to learn from [Brady]," said Garoppolo's father Tony. "Tom was a mentor to him. We couldn’t ask anything more.”), and notes that Brady, Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett -- the third-string QB who was traded to the Colts last year -- still have an ongoing group text chain.