Patriots are ending the Tom Brady era in style

At the end of summer, Tom Brady will celebrate his 40th birthday. And while there hasn’t been any reason to believe that Brady’s career is tailing off, the reality is that his time in the NFL is nearly over.

The New England Patriots aren’t going to waste those years.

On Thursday, the team opened up the pocketbooks in a way it rarely does to sign former Buffalo Bills cornerback Stephon Gilmore on a five-year $65 million deal and keep linebacker Dont’a Hightower on a four-year, $43.5 million contract.

But the biggest eye-opener was when the Patriots pulled off a trade Friday that will give Brady one of the NFL’s most dangerous deep threats: Brandin Cooks.

How much longer will Brady play? Most quarterbacks would’ve been done by now, but at age 39, Brady led the Patriots to a fifth Super Bowl victory and was in the thick of the MVP race with 28 touchdowns and two interceptions.

Brett Favre, Warren Moon, and Vinny Testaverde are the only quarterbacks to ever start more than eight games after turning 40. No matter how much Brady reminds Patriots safety Devin McCourty of Benjamin Button, the end of the quarterback’s career is on the horizon.

So the Patriots are gearing up to squeeze another Super Bowl run out of the best quarterback they’ve ever had.

Cooks is worth the first-round selection and swap of mid-round picks it cost to acquire him. At only 23 years old, he already has back-to-back 1,100-yard seasons under his belt with 20 career touchdowns.

He’s among the fastest players in the NFL and one of the most dangerous deep threats:

Bill Belichick was rumored to be interested in selecting Cooks in the 2014 NFL draft, but the New Orleans Saints traded up to grab the 20th overall pick and took the receiver nine picks before the Patriots were on the clock. Even after Cooks finished an underwhelming rookie year with only 550 receiving yards and three touchdowns, Belichick was convinced he would be dangerous.

“I’m glad we don’t have to play him twice a year and he’s not in our division,” Belichick told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in August 2015. “He’s a really good player.”

Now Cooks goes to an offense that already has Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, Chris Hogan, and Dion Lewis. Even without the contributions of Cooks, the Patriots were No. 3 in scoring offense and No. 4 in passing yards.

But the value of New England’s newest addition is his ability to run a “9 route.” Unlike a player like Edelman who will make big plays happen after the catch, Cooks’ greatest skill is running without the ball in his hands and taking the top off the defense before hauling in a deep ball.

It would simply be a waste if Cooks is in an offense that doesn’t rely on him to run by defensive backs and catch the ball more than 30 yards downfield. The Saints took full advantage of that, but Brady hasn’t always been too successful pushing the ball downfield.

He was below average in the category in 2015, but after spending an offseason focused on his deep ball mechanics, Brady was among the best in the NFL at passing deep in 2016. A similar performance at age 40 would be scary for the rest of the NFL, but there’s risk associated with giving up a first-round pick for a player who could be less valuable if Brady’s arm strength soon begins to fade.

Trading with the Patriots is widely considered to be a bad idea. The franchise is notorious for its swindling abilities and Belichick’s tendency to swap picks and players more than most.

But the reality is that New England loses trades all the time. The team is as willing as any to take risks, and it often doesn’t work out. Since Belichick took over for the Patriots in 2000, the team has made 124 trades, including three in the first two days of the 2017 league year.

A lot of those trades were complete flops for the Patriots. It wasn’t that long ago that the Patriots sent a fifth-round pick to the Cleveland Browns for Barkevious Mingo — a pass rusher who did absolutely nothing for the Patriots in 2016 and left to join the Indianapolis Colts in free agency after one year in New England.

At the wide receiver position, the Patriots have been especially fond of trades. In 2007, New England sent second- and seventh-round picks to the Miami Dolphins for Wes Welker and then picked up Randy Moss from the Oakland Raiders for a fourth-round pick a month later.

The addition of tight end Martellus Bennett via a trade with the Chicago Bears that swapped third-day draft picks helped the team on its road to Super Bowl LI.

But the Patriots also traded for Chad Ochocinco, Doug Gabriel, and Tim Wright, who had mostly unsuccessful and brief tenures in New England.

At other positions, the Patriots came out winners in trades for Corey Dillon and Aqib Talib, but they missed on trades for Albert Haynesworth and Duane Starks.

‘Win some, lose some’ is just the game a team plays when it makes a bevy of trades. But the thing that the Patriots do best is sell their own players for high prices.

Richard Seymour, Deion Branch, Matt Cassel, and Drew Bledsoe were all traded for early selections, and Jamie Collins was swapped for a third-round pick during the 2016 season.

With Brady nearing the end of his NFL career, the Patriots have a quarterback ready to take over in Jimmy Garoppolo. But the former second-round pick may be able to recoup more in a trade than any other player Belichick has ever sent away.

And that’s especially relevant after the trade for Cooks.

Following the deal that acquired the receiver from the Saints and a deal with the Carolina Panthers that netted the Patriots defensive end Kony Ealy, New England’s first pick in the 2017 NFL draft is the No. 72 pick.

The Patriots have gone without a first-round pick before, but the franchise has never in its history gone without first- and second-round selections.

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns are in need of a quarterback and reportedly willing to part with top draft picks to get Garoppolo. According to Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Patriots request for Cleveland’s No. 1 overall pick was rebuffed, but the Browns have plenty of other picks to work with.

The team has five selections in the first 65 picks of the draft — all ahead of the Patriots’ first selection. And the Browns have three picks in the second round of the 2018 NFL draft too.

Simply put: The Patriots have a quarterback they’re not using (for now) and no good draft picks, and the Browns need to find a quarterback with their many draft picks.

Cooks is a big swing by the Patriots, who look more willing than ever to shoot for the moon with Brady’s career winding down.

New England has never shied away from taking risks, historically, but sending away a first-round pick for a player and spending another $65 million on a cornerback represents an urgency the franchise doesn’t often show: an urgency that could lead to more blockbuster moves for the Patriots soon and one of the NFL’s scariest offenses in 2017.