What's the Narrative with Stidham?

Many draft experts in 2019 saw Stidham as a project, questioning his 2018 season decline because in 2018 he was viewed as a first round prospect. He was projected to fall between the third and fifth round in the 2019 NFL draft. He would end up getting drafted by the Patriots in round four.

Stidham would go on to have a hell of a rookie preseason, putting up better numbers in his rookie year than many of the Patriots former backups included Brissett and Jimmy Garoppolo.

Stidham got some time with the first string offense in practice during the 2019 season but how much, nobody truly knows. He was relegated back to the scout team and running the opponents playbooks when Brady was healthy enough to play.

Belichick said Stidham was ahead of rookies due to his extra time with the first string, and almost the entire roster had something positive to say about him in the spring of 2020.

However in 2020, entering his second year, he did not have a traditional sophomore offseason. There were no OTAs. Training camp in August was a joke. There was no preseason to gain any experience as a player.  On top of that he spent the season with the scout team practicing and running the opponents plays. 

Some people thought that Jarrett Stidham had a quarterback competition with Cam Newton. The people who claim to know something about football, all said there was no competition. That the job was Newton's the second he got signed. Newton had been in the league since 2011, winning an MVP in 2015.

Is it not more than likely that Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels knew that Stidham, the project they drafted in the 2019 NFL draft was not ready to start in year two, did not want to destroy his confidence with not having a true offseason, and signed Cam to be a bridge quarterback?

I mean the Patriots had nobody to throw to. At least that's what everyone is saying and it would've hurt Stidham's development to take the abuse without any help on the field, in the form of pass catchers.

Cam Newton praised how far Stidham had developed in December. James White a core piece of the Patriots offense and well respected member of the locker room, also threw his support behind Stidham. Essentially saying Stidham would be successful whenever  he's given the opportunity to start.

If you go back to the end of the season, the games didn't matter. Why would Belichick bring Stidham in versus Buffalo but not let him start versus the Jets? Is it possible that Buffalo is a truly worthy team to gain experience from, while the Jets are a joke and any success Stidham would've had against them, would've been inflated and not really worth evaluating?

Of course it's possible. It's also possible that Stidham was redshirted in 2020. People will say the coaching staff and the locker room lost faith in Stidham. Other than Devin McCourty coming out and saying he would've been disappointed if Newton was benched for Stidham, what Do we really know? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

The reports that Stidham was demoted to third string for circumstances around his injury? We have to go by the media because nobody in the organization is gonna say anything. Same with the loss of the locker room. There's no proof that it's anything but click bait. It's all hear say. Why because it's the slow news season. 

If you don't believe me, ask Andy Hart, and some other writers and analysts. Like a buddy of mine says, "It's all about Narrative". If you want to believe Stidham is a bum, You'll spin everything to fit your Ideology. If you believe he was redshirted, same thing.