Add DeVante Parker to the list of “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” players. He’s had a lot of big games for the Patriots, and now he’s headed to New England.
Per reports, Miami will receive a third-round pick in return, but not until 2023. The Patriots will receive the Dolphins’ fifth-round pick in that draft, lower the price.
Looks like a good trade to me. Parker didn’t fit into the Dolphins’ plans (they’ve got Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle), so picking up perhaps the 80th pick in next year’s draft looks like a nice prize. You can get good players in that area of the draft.
For the Patriots, they could use an outside receiver. Parker, I think, will be better than Nelson Agholor at running down deep passes. He’s a bigger target. I specifically remember a throw Mac Jones made in the preseason last year. It should have been about a 35-yard touchdown, but Agholor couldn’t haul it in. I think Parker would have caught that one.
Bill Belichick hasn’t done well drafting receivers. Has missed on a ton of picks in the first few rounds over the years. And Agholor was a free agent blunder last year. (Kendrick Bourne, I will concede, is looking a lot better after one year than I was expecting.)
It also seems to me that a lot of these key player moves, guys go to teams that they’ve had success against – as if coaches remember getting burned by them. In Parker’s case, he’s had 11 games with 100-plus receiving yards, and three of them have come against the Patriots. Specifically, Stephon Gilmore in 2019 was the best cornerback in the league; he shut out Amari Cooper entirely in one game that year. But Parker went into Foxborough in Week 17 and lit him up, catching 8 passes for 137 yards.
| DEVANTE PARKER 100-YARD GAMES | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Score | Tgt | No | Yards | Avg | TD |
| 2019 | Phil. | W 37-31 | 10 | 7 | 159 | 22.7 | 2 |
| 2019 | at N.E. | W 27-24 | 11 | 8 | 137 | 17.1 | 0 |
| 2019 | Buff. | L 20-37 | 10 | 7 | 135 | 19.3 | 0 |
| 2018 | at Hou. | L 23-42 | 9 | 6 | 134 | 22.3 | 0 |
| 2020 | at NYJ | W 20-3 | 14 | 8 | 119 | 14.9 | 0 |
| 2020 | at Buff. | L 26-56 | 14 | 7 | 116 | 16.6 | 0 |
| 2019 | Cin. | W 38-35 | 15 | 5 | 111 | 22.2 | 1 |
| 2020 | Sea. | L 23-31 | 12 | 10 | 110 | 11.0 | 0 |
| 2016 | at N.E. | L 24-31 | 13 | 8 | 106 | 13.3 | 0 |
| 2015 | N.E. | W 20-10 | 6 | 5 | 106 | 21.2 | 1 |
| 2016 | at S.D. | W 31-24 | 8 | 5 | 103 | 20.6 | 0 |
Parker will now face Miami twice per year, so perhaps he comes back to haunt them at some point. But I’m not a big believer in that theory. If you don’t want a player on your own team, why not stick him on the roster of a rival? Consider Baker Mayfield, for example. The Browns have concluded he’s not a good starting quarterback, so you would think their first choice would be to send him to the Steelers (especially if that also involved removing a draft pick from Pittsburgh).
—Ian Allan