It remains to be seen just what the New England Patriots will do with their back-up quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, who remains under team control for just one more season. If you believe the latest report, though, it’ll be hard for them to pass up the “several” “blockbuster” offers they’ll receive from teams when the new league year starts on March 9.
But which teams will make those offers? You’re not going to see a team admit it publicly right now, but we can go to one source that organically distills all available information into a theoretical best guess about where a player will wind up: the betting odds.
Bovada has released odds on where Jimmy Garoppolo will suit up for week one of the 2017 season, and the Patriots still stand the best odds of retaining Garoppolo, at 2/1. The Browns and 49ers show up with, as you’d expect, reasonable odds (3/1 and 9/2, respectively), and the Broncos, Texans, and Jets all get 12/1 odds.
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But it’s the Bears that show up as the top non-Patriots club at 9/4. The implied percentage chance there is just over 30%, which is only slightly lower than the Patriots’ 33% shot.
In other words, Vegas believes the Bears currently are just about as likely to trade for Garoppolo as the Patriots are to keep him.
In your gut, does that feel right? Given the reported extreme interest in Garoppolo for the Bears, but stacked against the many other possible quarterback paths available this offseason … plus the other interested teams and the fact that the Patriots may elect to simply keep him, 30ish% sounds about right to me.