Once you begin fishing around a forever-churning rumor mill, one must prepare themselves for a few stray mentions. We just couldn’t help ourselves. We kept fishing for anything that linked the Philadelphia Eagles to Myles Garrett and stumbled across a few New England Patriots rumors that mentioned A.J. Brown.
We never mentioned this before. We kind of laughed it off because we just assumed people were taking that angle because Mike Vrabel was in Foxborough now but alas, when certain names bring this up, we tend to tune our antennas to their frequencies.
That brings us to a story we read by Matthew Berry and a post we saw from our friends over at DraftKings.
A.J. Brown’s name is being mentioned around Patriots circles, and we’d like for that to stop almost immediately.
Well, these aren’t necessarily rumors, but we hope the smoke doesn’t lead us to any fires. As we settled into March’s first full week, NBC Sports’ Matthew Berry offered an interesting read, the 25 most interesting things he heard at the 2025 NFL Combine.
In it, he mentioned the Pats contacted Philly about acquiring A.J. Brown’s services: “To that point about a shallow WR market; I’ve heard the Patriots WILL do whatever they can to get a real ‘WR1’ for Drake Maye and the new coaching staff.
I heard they are knocking on all doors, seeing what they can possibly trade for, and one person told me they heard the Patriots called Philly asking if A.J. Brown was available. Shrug emoji on if that’s true, or what Philly’s answer was, but this much seems certain: New England will aggressively try to upgrade its wide receiver room this offseason.”
Yeah, let’s end this quickly. The New England Patriots can’t have A.J. Brown!
Our buddies over at DraftKings added a little fuel to the fire by posting something about a mock trade. Here’s what they came up with.
Despite misinformed rumors, A.J. Brown has been a good teammate and captain during his time in Philly with the Eagles. His on-field play speaks for itself.
In three seasons with the Birds, he has started 46 of his 47 in-game appearances, and he has added 261 receptions, 4,031 yards receiving, and 25 TDs to the cause. He also set a single-season franchise record for receiving yards (1,496) while notching two of his three Pro Bowl nods (2022, 2023) and three consecutive Second-Team All-Pro nods (2022–2024).
He’s also a (freaking) champion! A.J. has proven to be one of the great postseason performers in Eagles history. In seven games, he has notched 25 receptions en route to 309 yards and three touchdowns. Two of those TDs have been scored in Super Bowls.
So, here’s where we sit. Though no one asked for our opinion, we’ll offer one anyway. We repeat. The Patriots can’t have A.J., and neither can anyone else. We have taken it upon ourselves to end this discussion before it gains any more momentum.
