Former Patriots TE makes wild claim about 2020 Pats with Tom Brady

Former Patriots tight end Jermaine Wiggins loves unleashing hot takes.

Former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady stunned the franchise, and the entire NFL for that matter, when he announced he wouldn’t be returning to New England in 2020. A couple of days later, it was reported that he’d inked the richest contract of his prestigious career (based on annual average value) with the Buccaneers, pocketing $25 million a piece over two years.

Fans were left puzzled as to why Brady would spurn the Patriots for an organization that hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2007, but it quickly became clear why he chose Tampa Bay. For starters, they had all the pieces in place (besides an experienced quarterback, of course) to compete for a championship.

The Patriots, meanwhile, had damning roster holes that not even Cam Newton, though he certainly didn’t cover himself in glory under center, could overcome.

Despite that being apparent to seemingly every analyst in the business, former Patriots tight end Jermaine Wiggins is somehow convinced that they would’ve made the AFC Championship Game if Brady hadn’t left.

"“If Brady was here this year, the team looks completely different and there’s a realistic chance they are playing in the AFC Championship Game,” Wiggins said during an interview with WEEI Radio.“If Bill (Belichick) knew that Brady wanted to come back and be back, he would have traded for Stefon Diggs, so Stefon Diggs and Brady would be doing what we saw Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs are doing. And what game did they play in?”“All it takes is one piece, like Bruce Arians said, one guy to make a difference and that guy could have been Stefon Diggs and the Patriots were actively going out after him. Maybe they got wind that Brady wasn’t coming back and they were like, ‘Why are we going to bring in Stefon Diggs when we don’t even know our quarterback situation?’”"

Coming out on top in the Stefon Diggs sweepstakes — the Patriots reportedly backed out after the Bills requested a fourth draft pick — obviously would’ve made a huge difference, but everybody would agree that Buffalo’s roster was vastly superior to that of New England’s even before the Diggs blockbuster.

Diggs, along with the continued development of quarterback Josh Allen, just put them over the top from a competitive standpoint.

At the end of the day, this was a team that lost a string of key pieces to free agency and watched a league-leading eight players opt out prior to training camp. Those departures and losses really shed a damning light on the front office’s questionable draft history in recent years, as the young players, outside of a few standout performers, proved incapable of filling their shoes.

We admire Wiggins’ optimism, but the Patriots were staring another first-round exit in the face even if Brady’d stuck around for another season. Their roster simply didn’t stack up against some of the conference’s juggernauts, and that would’ve come full circle in the playoffs.

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