NFL Notes: Jadeveon Clowney, Jimmy Garoppolo, Tom Brady

Jadeveon Clowney

• According to NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport, Titans OLB Jadeveon Clowney should get full clearance following surgery to repair his torn meniscus in April. Given that Clowney would need to pass a physical to sign with a team in free agency, Rapoport says this could delay things a few weeks. 
• Clowney of course waited all offseason to sign with Tennessee last year, inking a one-year deal on September 6. 
• Unlike last offseason, though, Clowney will be able to visit team facilities for a visit and/or a physical as long as he passes a rapid result COVID-19 test, according to the NFL offseason guidelines. (Pro Football Talk)
• We have Clowney listed in our Top 50 2021 NFL Free Agents.

Jimmy Garoppolo

Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer doesn’t think teams around the NFL including the Patriots should be banking on the possibility that the 49ers will make QB Jimmy Garoppolo available this offseason. 

“I don’t think a team like New England or anybody else can go into this offseason banking on the idea that Jimmy Garoppolo is going to be available,” Breer said on NBC Sports Boston‘s Arbella Early Edition. “Maybe he will be, but I think for that to happen, the Niners are going to have to find somebody that they see as a clear upgrade from Jimmy Garoppolo.”

Tom Brady

In an appearance on the Late Late Show with James Corden, Buccaneers QB Tom Brady said the first words his wife, Gisele Bundchen, said to him after he won the Super Bowl this year were, “What more do you have to prove?”

“I just gave her a big hug,” Brady said. He’s long said his goal is to play until he’s 45, which would be in 2022, and broached the possibility of playing longer this offseason. “I was trying to figure out a way to change the subject really quick. I think I moved onto something else pretty quickly.”

Brady said this past year in Tampa Bay was very different than the rest of his career in New England, but he thoroughly enjoyed changing things up. 

“It was very different because where I was for 20 years was, obviously, it was great for me, it was spectacular, I wouldn’t change anything, and I think that when we’re at that point at the Patriots, everyone at the start of the season would be like ‘well, who are you guys playing in the championship game?’” Brady said. “And it always got to be like, you know, the expectations were so, not unrealistic, it was just like people jumped ahead of all the intense competition which in the end for us you kind of feel like, you know, it’s a lot harder than that. It’s a lot harder than that. And I think going into this year was different for me, because you go to a different place and that wasn’t really the question I was being asked. The question is, you know, ‘can you guys be successful? How are you going to be successful? How are you going to learn your teammates? How are they going to learn you?’”