Report: Browns offered up a second and third for Jimmy Garoppolo

The shocking trade of Jimmy Garoppolo from the New England Patriots to the San Francisco 49ers is still being felt around the NFL.

Though, it’s the Cleveland Browns who are more impacted by the deal than any other team outside of the two involved. Cleveland had set its sights on Garoppolo for a large majority of the offseason.

Now comes this report from NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport noting that Cleveland did indeed offer up a second and third-round pick to the Patriots for Garoppolo leading up to the 2017 NFL Draft.

This comes with Browns ownership being upset over the front office’s handling of the failed A.J. McCarron trade.

There’s also some thought out there that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick simply didn’t want to deal Garoppolo to the Browns. There’s a couple reasons behind this.

First off, Belichick still holds a grudge over being fired by the Browns over two decades ago. Secondly, the head coach might not have wanted to put Garoppolo in what is a disastrous situation in Cleveland.

And finally, there’s this interesting tidbit from ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

“I think a lot of this, also, some part of this had to do with the fact that Bill Belichick has as much respect as he does for John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan,” Schefter said on a local radio station (h/t Niners Nation). “And when he looked at it, he could have traded Jimmy Garoppolo anywhere. Cleveland was dying for Jimmy Garoppolo. Ge decided he wanted to send him out of conference, to an organization he trusted.”

In any event, the Patriots ended up taking a smaller package in return for Garoppolo than what the Browns had offered them months back. Maybe it was to get him out of the conference. Maybe the Pats simply didn’t want to work with Cleveland. Maybe they felt that the 49ers were a better situation for Garoppolo.

We’ll likely never hear the full story here. What we do know is that Cleveland remains an absolute joke of an organization. That was taken to a whole new level this week.