AJ Brown Says He Cried When the Patriots Drafted N'Keal Harry Over Him. Join the Club.

As we slog our way through this season that feels more every day like we're witnessing The Fall of the House of Belichick, to the point where even the most stoic public figure of our lifetimes is doing the Sad Charlie Brown Walk:

… it's tempting ask yourself how and when everything changed. Not in some vague, big picture way. Some broad, historical context, like, "By the 2nd century AD, the Era of the Five Good Emperors had ended. And for many years, Rome was ruled by a series of lesser, corrupt and decadent …" I mean, can we pinpoint one exact moment, one inciting incident, where the Dynasty went into a decline that it still hasn't pulled out of? 

I believe we can. Actually, I believe one NFL player has put his finger on the one bad decision that sent the Patriots into the tailspin that has only accelerated in the last month: AJ Brown:

More Sad Charlie Brown.

(Note: That is one morbidly depressed, neurotic kid. Why did I love this so much when I was little? Moving on …)

Like I said when they released N'Keal Harry, the decision to draft him at the end of the 1st round in 2019 retired the trophy not only for the worst pick of GM Bill's career, but the worst personnel move of any kind. Unless you count not signing Tom Brady to a long term extension when he had the chance, but that one sort of stands alone in it's own separate category. Belichick's previous worst was deciding to sent a 2nd round pick for Mohamed Sanu that same year in a desperate attempt to make up for Harry's total lack of production.  One mistake leading to another as you try to correct the first. Then they become a force multiplier that just beget more failures and more corrections. 

Here's the side-by-side comparison between Harry and Brown, via Pro Football Reference: 

Just to rub a bucket of TB12 Fitness-approved Himalayan Pink Salt into the open, gaping wound here, the "worst" season of Brown's career was his last year in Tennessee, when he had:

63 receptions for 863 yards and 5 touchdowns

These are Harry's career numbers:

64 receptions for 714 yards and 5 touchdowns

So far this year in Minnesota, Harry has taken 17 offensive snaps. Only one of them a passing down. Meaning he's evolved into a run blocking specialist. As a wide receiver. Which is the NFL equivalent of being the best lifeguard in the desert. Brown meanwhile, through six games is on pace for 119 receptions, 1,900 yards, his third Pro Bowl and possibly his first All Pro.

So who's crying now, Patriots fans or Swole Batman? 

To be fair to Belichick (which is more than all the anonymous sources in the 2019 Patriots war room who later on put the Harry pick squarely on him, wiping their own fingerprints off the crime scene), that year's draft class of receivers was particularly hard to assess. In simple terms, wideouts came off the board in this order:

• 25th: Marquise Brown - Above average receiver, one 1,000-yard season
• 32nd: Harry - A FEMA-level disaster who may have killed a franchise
• 36th: Deebo Samuel - A one-time All Pro with 14.5 career YPR
• 51st: AJ Brown - Stud who cried in a closet when the Patriots passed on him
• 56th: Mecole Hardman - The 3rd or 4th option on a loaded offense, averaging 33.8 YPG for his career
• 57th: JJ Arcega-Whiteside - Role player, out of football after three years and 40 games
• 62nd: Andy Isabella - Out of football after 447 total career yards.
• 64th: DK Metcalf - A physical freak who's missed one game in his career, with two 1,000-yard seasons and 37 TDs

Go ahead, make sense of that. I dare you to. But you can't. Teams that spend millions on college scouting cast their lot with Harry, Arcega-Whiteside and Isabella, while having two or more cracks at Metcalf and passing. Go figure. I'm not making excuses for Belichick because it's his job and the job of every personnel guy in the NFL to make these calls and to get them right. Getting them wrong has consequences. And right now his 1-5 team is suffering them. 

But it does make you wonder what the Butterfly Effect would've been had the Pats decided to go with AJ Brown at the end of Thursday night. Does he click with Brady in such a way that he's not the frustrated, emotionally distant smoke monster he was in 2019, with no one to throw to but Julian Edelman? Does he decide he's no longer interested in playing footsies with Dolphins ownership now that he's got a veteran/rookie duo of targets like something out of a cop-buddy movie that he loves playing with? Does he decide he's got more of a future in Foxboro as long as Brown is his WR1 and agrees to the last contract offer he got? The world will never know. All we do know is Belichick chose poorly. And by the time Harry had established he was not the guy they expected him to be (he was in bounds here, by the way):

… it was too late. 

So when AJ Brown wept on that Thursday night in April, 2019, he wept for us all. 

Of all the words of tongue or pen/ The saddest are these: "It might have been."