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One of the biggest stories of the 2017 offseason is the future of Patriots backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. With Tom Brady claiming he wants to play into his late-40s and showing no signs of slowing down, Garoppolo is a hot commodity on the trade market.  

Garoppolo himself isn’t on Twitter, so he doesn’t see the constant flow of rumors every day, but he’s got a pretty good news source keeping him informed of everything that’s going on: his mother.

“My mom loves telling me the news updates, so she’s all over that stuff, but it’s been working really well,” Garoppolo told Adam Schefter on the ”Know Them From Adam” podcast. “She could be your assistant. She’s all over the place. Her and my dad on Twitter and stuff like that -- I don’t even think they know how to tweet, but they always have something going on.”

And what do you know, on Wednesday there are more rumors floating around about Garoppolo’s potential future. Over at Bleacher Report, Mike Freeman reports that rival teams are expecting someone to pony up with “an offer for Jimmy Garoppolo [the Patriots] cannot refuse.” Freeman cites the so-called “Dak Prescott Phenomenon,” with teams believing that acquiring a young quarterback can change the future of the franchise overnight and is worth a first-round pick. (This “phenomenon” obviously predates Prescott, but that’s what Freeman called it.) And if there is a team that wants Garoppolo, it better come with that kind of offer, CSN New England’s Tom Curran says, because it will take the Pats having their “doors blown off” if they’re going to move the young QB. 

This all seems like pretty standard pre-draft posturing, with leaked potential offers and a stance that the team dangling a player on the market needs to get a ton in exchange for moving him. As CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora reported earlier this week, the Patriots are plotting to drag this thing out, believing teams will get more and more desperate as the draft draws closer. The quarterback market in free agency is weak, and there will likely be several teams that don’t yet have a surefire quarterback of the future (or present) on board by the time the draft rolls around. If they can engage those teams in a bidding war, the Pats can pit them against each other to wring even more value out of their asset.