WEEI – ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter joined Kirk and Callahan Wednesday … to talk about the Patriots potentially trading Jimmy Garoppolo this offseason … and his opinion is the team will listen and if the right offer is presented, they will trade him.

“I think they definitely are going to listen and it’s going to be up to another team to make an attractive enough [offer]. There was one person I spoke to with the Patriots who said he would be stunned if they traded him. Now, that doesn’t mean that that person is right, it means I think they are going to listen and it means they are going to ask for a lot. If somebody steps forward whether it is Chicago, or Cleveland, or San Francisco I think they act, but they are not looking to randomly deal the guy to deal the guy.”

As for what it might take? Schefter said a starting point would be a first and a fourth-round pick.

“In my mind, Sam Bradford went for a 1 and a 4 [round pick], so to me that is the starting point and I don’t even know if they would do it then,” he said.

This report – or rumor or rampant, baseless speculation Schefter is pulling out of ass on the spur of the moment, whatever it is – is exactly what I want to hear out of the Patriots right now. It’s so perfect that if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Belichick is using the same secret machine he uses to jam helmet communications, steal signals and mess up the game clock to read my mind.

It goes without saying that if they’re going to trade Jimmy Garoppolo I want them to max the hell out on the return. I want one of those ridiculous packages coming back like the early 90s Cowboys got for Herschel Walker or the Rams bilked the Redskins out of for the RGIII pick. That begins by quietly spreading the word to useful puppets like Schefter that you have zero desire to part with your beloved future franchise QB. You send the message you are not a motivated seller so it’s going to take the world’s most motivated buyer to turn the talks into a negotiation, or they’ll be over fast.

But you follow that up with another planted story. That the talks begin with an offer of a first and a fouth. In the end, it’ll take more. Lots more. But you throw the 1 and the 4 out there first. Why? Because that is exactly what the league took from you in the Deflategate robbery.

This is diabolical. Putting those numbers out there to remind the NFL that nothing is forgiven or forgotten. That all those incompetent league executives who brayed like donkeys when Roger Goodell lowered the Ginger Hammer on the Pats will now have to pay for their insolence. It’s like Hitler finding the exact same train car the French made Germany sign the Treaty of Versailles in, and making them sign their surrender in it. (Without all the messy genocide.) It’s motivated by revenge, humiliation and petty vindictiveness. And it fills my heart with joy.

Again, I want a mother lode of picks before we say goodbye to Jimmy G. But making someone give back better picks than the ones the league took away to get a backup quarterback no one would have seen if they didn’t also suspend Brady is the perfect place to start.