Now, Bill Belichick has said and will continue to say that the trades are made in the best interests of the team.

But in the end, those trades were made for one main reason, the same reason that drives many decisions down at Gillette Stadium: It’s all about Tom Brady.

There are probably a dozen reasons why the Patriots traded Jamie Collins to the Browns on Monday, and traded Chandler Jones to the Cardinals in the offseason: contract demands, player value, on-field performance, work ethic, locker room fit, and more.

But those are code words. What’s in the best interest of the team is maximizing the time the Patriots have left with Brady as their quarterback.


And a good case can be made that the Collins and Jones trades, while removing productive pieces from the defense, actually improved the Patriots’ chances of winning more Super Bowls in the limited time they have left with Brady.

How can trading productive pieces for future draft picks help maximize Brady’s window? Let’s break it down.

Of course, we don’t know how long Brady has left with the Patriots. He’s certainly not showing signs of slowing down at age 39. But the Patriots are definitely preparing for the end, as evidenced by the recent drafting of Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett. Does Brady have three years left? Maybe five, if he and the Patriots are lucky? Either way, it’s coming.

Now let’s look at the trades and their timing. Both players were dealt before their contracts expired. The Patriots made a decision that Jones and Collins weren’t in their long-term plans, and traded them away instead of letting them play out their contracts and leave in free agency.

Could the Patriots have used Jones this year with the pass rush? Could they have used Collins’s athleticism in the second half of the season? No question. If the Patriots’ pass rush, or inability to cover tight ends and running backs, costs them in the playoffs, the spotlight will shine brightly on Belichick and these controversial decisions.


But trading Jones and Collins early gives the Patriots a head start on developing the next wave of talent.

Let’s assume the Patriots kept Jones and Collins this year, then let them leave in free agency. The NFL has a system of compensatory draft picks that helps teams that lose talent in free agency.

It’s based on a complicated formula that the NFL doesn’t explain, but revolves mostly around playing time. If the players you lose play more snaps than the players you gain, the higher your compensatory picks become. The highest pick you can gain in the system is a third-rounder, and it comes at the end of the round (after the 96th pick).

You can also get compensatory picks in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh rounds. Brady was drafted with a compensatory pick in the sixth round of the 2000 draft.

But the return isn’t immediate. Had the Patriots let Jones and Collins walk away in free agency in the spring of 2017, they wouldn’t have received compensatory picks until the 2018 draft.

The Patriots also would have had to dance delicately around free agency next spring. Compensatory picks are not awarded on a one-to-one basis. Instead, the NFL looks at the sum of players you lost and the sum of players you gained, and then awards compensatory picks.


So now let’s look at the individual trades.

For Jones, the Patriots received a second-round pick in the 2016 draft, which they spun into third- and fourth-round picks. They also got offensive lineman Jonathan Cooper, though he was just a throw-in and was released a few weeks ago.

The Patriots turned those draft picks into guard Joe Thuney and receiver Malcolm Mitchell. Thuney has been a Day 1 starter and has played every single snap this year; he looks like a good piece on the offensive line for the next several years. Mitchell has made only six catches for 82 yards this season, but his developmental clock has already begun. He might be able to contribute this year, and the Patriots hope that by 2017 he’s ready to be a productive piece.

Do the Patriots miss Jones’s pass-rushing this year? Definitely. But they’re still 7-1 without him, and by trading him for 2016 draft picks, they’ve sped up the developmental clock on his replacements by a full two years.

The Collins situation is similar. Had they let him leave in free agency next spring, they wouldn’t have received a compensatory pick for him until 2018. And there is no guarantee that it would be a third-rounder. The Patriots would have had to carefully manage their free agent signings, and might not have been able to sign a player or two they wanted, to make sure that they came out on the right side of the compensatory-pick equation.


Now with this trade, the Patriots presumably know what they’re getting: a third-round compensatory pick from the Browns (who basically sat out free agency last year and lost center Alex Mack, who has played every snap for the Falcons). The Patriots are getting the pick in 2017, a year earlier than they otherwise would have. And now they can sign players in free agency next spring without having to worry about the compensatory-pick formula.

Will a third-round pick be a star, or even a starter for the Patriots? It’s about 50-50. The Patriots have taken busts such as Jake Bequette and Taylor Price in the third round, and they’ve also found productive players such as Logan Ryan, Duron Harmon, and Stevan Ridley.

But they’re getting immediate return for Collins, and starting the development for that third-round pick a year earlier. It’s the old “time value of money” principle from your Macroeconomics 101 class: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

The key to these moves, of course, is the Patriots’ internal analysis of Collins and Jones. They determined that the players weren’t going to be part of the future, and that they could get by without them in the present.

Obviously, there was more going on behind the scenes than we’ll ever know. Jones had that bizarre incident with the Foxborough police right before last year’s playoffs. Collins was having a down year, and based on what I heard from league sources and from former Patriots executive Michael Lombardi, Collins was letting his contract talks affect his play and his preparation.


For as talented and athletic as Collins is, if he’s missing his assignments, playing dispassionately, and bringing a sour attitude to the locker room, then maybe the Patriots are better off without him.

There’s no question that the Patriots discarded two talented football players. But the trades also allow them to maximize their time left with Brady.

And that, clearly, is what’s in the best interest of the Patriots.

Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin.