Patriots Could Only Get A Late-Round Pick For QB Ryan Mallett?

Mike Reiss of ESPN Boston writes that the Patriots would be lucky to get “a late-round pick at best” for backup QB Ryan Mallett in a trade.

According to Reiss, the “best-case scenario” for New England would be to keep Mallett as Tom Brady‘s backup and hope he steps up big during the postseason. This would likely increase Mallett’s value in 2015 when he will be an unrestricted free agent and lead to the Patriots netting a higher compensatory draft pick.

Mallett has been a popular name in trade rumors for a few years now, but Reiss mentions that the trade interest in him never developed to the point where the Patriots were comfortable parting with him.

The Texans have come up as a potential landing spot for Mallett given that Bill O’Brien is now the head coach. However, they have the first pick to work with and even if they pass on a quarterback at No. 1 overall, there is still a good chance that they could take someone at No. 33 overall. 

Paying Mallett a market value contract to backup Brady would cost them a lot more than taking a quarterback prospect to develop in the middle rounds of the draft while Brady plays out the remainder of his current contract.

Brady, 36, has four remains remaining on his $60 million contract. He has an average base salary of $14.12 million over this span to go along with similar cap figures.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about Mallett and a possible trade in the coming months.