Schefter: Garoppolo trade partly fueled by Belichick’s respect for Lynch and Shanahan
"I don't think that they wanted to move on from him," Schefter said. "I just think that they took it as long as they could. They went up to the trade deadline. They made a decision after making repeated attempts to try to re-sign Jimmy Garoppolo that they were going to be unable to do that and so they traded him to San Francisco."
"I think a lot of this also, some part of this, had to do with the fact that Bill Belichick has as much respect as he does for John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan," Schefter continued on Thursday. "And when he looked at it, he could have traded Jimmy Garoppolo anywhere. Cleveland was dying for Jimmy Garoppolo. He decided that he wanted to send him out of conference to an organization he trusted. I know people would be skeptical of that, but I think he believes in these guys and that they're going to do right by Jimmy Garoppolo and this will be a great environment to groom him, grow him, and have him learn.