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Investigation: A police officer’s hidden porn cam

Daily SF News — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 17:25:18 +0000

CHESTERFIELD, Mo. — When we began investigating a hidden porn camera, we never dreamed it would lead us to a police officer. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how we broke this story.

A man in Philadelphia noticed online videos of men and boys using a public restroom, and he could tell the subjects did not know they were being recorded. He noticed several people were wearing shirts with business logos from St. Charles County, Missouri, so he googled “Investigative Reporter St. Louis” and chose me to investigate.

Arrest made in deadly Clayton shooting

The Philadelphia man sent us “non-pornographic” screengrabs so that we had a view of what the bathroom looked like and for the next several days, photographer Dave Sharp and I checked every public restroom we could find, working our way East from Wentzville. We were looking for the same tile pattern and failed to find it. We also called some of the businesses from the logos our tipster found. Every business that I called hung up on me. I sensed that the owners were concerned that my reporting of this story would somehow hurt their business, even though I’d explained they were potential victims and that would not name them in my reporting.

Our Philadelphia tipster continued monitoring the site and noticed a man with an arm tattoo that said “chimney sweep,” along with a chimney logo. Our next stop was to call chimney sweep companies which again led to hang-up after hang-up.

Out of frustration, I told my colleague that we would personally visit one of the last chimney sweep companies on our list, which was a business in St. Charles County. I’ll never forget walking in and telling the owner, “Please hear me out in the interest of justice and helping others.” He laughed, and he did.

I asked: “Do you have an employee with an arm chimney sweep tattoo?”
“Yes,” he said.

I remember yelling in gratitude, and the owner called his employee to head back to base and talk to us in person.

What we now thought would be easy, still took days to pin down. The “chimney sweep” guy gave us bathroom after bathroom that he’d recently visited. We checked each one. None matched. He apologized that he *never uses a customer’s restroom, so he’s constantly using public restrooms, and there are too many to count.

It took another couple of days before we finally found a perfect match, and we knew we had our hidden camera location – a Mobile On the Run on Clarkson just south of Interstate 40. We knew the camera had to be hidden in a ceiling tile, so we pulled it down. There was no camera. So my colleague Dave Sharp and I parked nearby and watched. We watched for hours. Hours turned into days. We went into the restroom regularly to check the ceiling tiles — never a camera.

After several days, we knew we had to take another approach. Videos were continuing to be posted, according to our Philadelphia source. We noticed police officers were regularly using this bathroom, so I knew the next step – go to Chesterfield Police. The spokesperson at the time was Captain Steve Lewis, who is now the police chief of Ellisville, Missouri.

I knew Capt. Lewis to be a good man who I could approach at a moment’s notice, so I told my colleague we would just drop in on him. As we pulled up to police headquarters, he was out front talking to citizens.

I literally jumped out of our still-moving car and yelled at him, “I can help you solve a crime in which your officers are victims. And they don’t know it.”

I had his attention, and he immediately brought me into a meeting with the highest-ranking command staff. I knew the police would be able to use search warrants to trace the website to the source and that would get our answer. First, the Commanders had to discuss strategy. One officer said something like, “We can’t tell our officers, because this will spread like wildfire. Everyone will tell their spouses, and we’ll end up seeing it on Facebook before we solve it.”

Another officer answered (I’m paraphrasing from memory), “‘You’re right, but it’s a chance we have to take. We a have a moral responsibility to tell our officers they could be victims of a crime.”

Commanders chose option two, which we respected. We waited for the results. The next day, we were met with another devastating setback. The porn website was down. It was completely gone and now untraceable. This was a wall that seemed unsurmountable. I told our Philadelphia tipster, who mentioned that other videos on the same website had become more graphic and appeared to be recorded at a different location, possibly a home.

He had one more logo from a shirt, which he snapped a screengrab and sent to me. It was a blurry three letters that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place them. Ten other people I work with thought the same, but they also could not identify it. Then our assignment manager Glen Seibold glanced at it and knew immediately. It was from a St. Charles County car dealer. In this case, I did not feel comfortable contacting the business as a reporter because our tipster explained that the video was of a willing participant who had arrived at this mysterious home for anonymous sex.

This was a job for the police. I returned to Chesterfield Police Commanders who visited the dealership. They found the person from the video, and that person told police about the house he had visited (where he thought he was having sex with a woman behind a curtain). When police arrived at the house in Wentzville, they could not get a hit on the license plate from the car parked in the driveway. It came up as “anonymous” or “protected.”

So they knocked on the door. It was one of their own colleagues – a police officer who answered. It was David Cerna. This all went down without my presence as it was part of an active police investigation.

The next day the commanders brought me back into police HQ and sat me down with my colleague Dave Sharp. They said, “You’re not going to believe who we traced your material to.”

I’m thinking professional athlete or politician. They said no – it was one of their own officers. Cerna was immediately fired and lost his police license.

The police investigation continued and determined that he had also secretly video recorded his own colleagues in the police locker room. They found Cerna also inappropriately frisked a teen boy and recorded his genitals. Cerna was convicted, went to prison for a year, and is now a sex offender for life. We continue reporting on him to this day as he continues to fight cases in court ranging from shoplifting and drug use to failing to report as a sex offender.

This is our reporter’s story filed on June 11, 2014:

You or one of your kids may have appeared on video on a pornographic website. A FOX 2 investigation led to the discovery of a police officer behind it. Videos of men going to the bathroom began spreading across the United States until Fox Files investigator Chris Hayes traced them to a gas station bathroom in Chesterfield.

With the help of police, we found an unexpected suspect.

Update: Former cop accused of posting bathroom videos online to face grand jury

It started with a hidden camera we discovered was at the Mobile On The Run on Clarkson, just south of the Chesterfield Mall. Video from a hidden camera showed people going to the bathroom and the videos were posted on a pornographic website.

Our investigation started on the East Coast, where a man said he clicked on a banner that took him to the offensive porn website. He noticed many victims wearing company shirts. That’s how we found victim Rob Cheney who told us, “When I saw myself pooping, I was just like you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

We asked Cheney for a list of places where he used the bathroom. He explained, “I had to think because you don’t document everywhere you go to the bathroom, so it took me a while to pinpoint where it was.”

Fox 2 checked his list of restrooms, comparing the online video to each bathroom. Then we found a perfect match, from the floor tiles to the drain by the toilet. Cheney just moved to the area and laughed, “Three weeks and I’m already on a poop cam pretty much. So three weeks and everybody’s seen me poop? That’s terrible. Hahaha.”

But we found no camera when we first discovered the bathroom. We took our investigative research to Chesterfield Police. Chief Ray Johnson held a news conference and said, “The Chesterfield Police Department has arrested one of our own officers, working from a tip from an investigative reporter Chris Hayes from Fox 2 News.”

The website unexpectedly shut down during the investigation, but Fox 2 had already gathered intelligence needed to break the case. A key break involved a web posting of a St. Charles County man visiting the house of the possible suspect. The St. Charles County man went to the house for anonymous sex.

According to police, the suspect later admitted luring about 50 men to his Wentzville home, offering oral sex through what he called a gloryhole. He reportedly lured the men through a Craigslist ad, then secretly videotaped them entering his home and using his gloryhole.

Neighbor Kim Parker remembered talking to other neighbors during the police raid of Cerna’s home. She said, “We were discussing how we had noticed a lot of suspicious cars at all different times of the morning and evening, always with Illinois license plates, circling the area, pulling in the driveway and then shortly after pulling back out.”

The raid followed our lead involving the Craigslist add. And it netted the arrest of Chesterfield’s own officer, 33-year-old David Cerna.

Cerna’s reported website included an interesting discussion when someone posted “is this legal?” The response reads, “I’m not an attorney so I don’t know.”

Police Chief Ray Johnson described getting the phone call that his officer was the suspect. He said, “It was rather shocking of course and took a minute to sink in, but we realized the severity of it and just set out to deal with it immediately as we would with any other suspect.”

Chesterfield Police used our information to crack this case in less than one week. To the Department’s credit, officers did not hesitate to say they found one of their own officers. He’s a single man who has served on the force for six years. Cerna faces charges in St. Louis County for the bathroom hidden camera and charges in St. Charles County for videotaping men he reportedly lured to the gloryhole. He is no longer a Chesterfield Police Officer.

Read the Probable Cause Statement

The post Investigation: A police officer’s hidden porn cam appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The CAM Come Up | Excessive Occasions

Daily SF News — Sat, 13 May 2023 10:56:48 +0000

Few names loom as large over exotic American cannabis as Anna Willey. In a legal industry where jokes about quality have become the norm, not many companies have been able to float on top of that noise based on the quality of the product. Hers, California Artisanal Medicine or CAM, is like a battleship ripping through the waves of the decimated California industry.

While many struggle to sell middle-tier products as elite, Willey can barely feed the monster. She’s on the cusp of opening her 2,000-plus-light cathedral of hype in Sacramento, on top of a new facility she just opened in Long Beach. The facility will be her second in California’s capital, with the ground now breaking on a third. Willey jokes she’ll run back to her 500-lighter if she screws it up, but many insiders expect the facility to become one of America’s premier heat factories once it’s finished. Some even inquired with Willey about her helping their own production needs.

But how did a bubbly Indian-born retired software engineer climb to the highest heights of California’s cannabis industry with a stop on the Colorado throne along the way? It all started in what is currently the wildest frontier in legal cannabis, New York City.

High Times Magazine, November 2022

Working Your Way Up

Willey arrived in NYC with her parents at the age of 6. At one point, her dad would leave mom in NYC while he headed north to get a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the top engineering schools on the planet. Her mom would become a nurse. By sixth grade in 1985, Willey would become a courier for one of NYC’s famed old-school weed delivery services. She pointed to that moment as where her real cannabis adventure started, but before that, she had enjoyed the smell the first time she was around someone smoking.

“Back then, it was all about the service in New York City,” Willey told High Times. “To get into cannabis, you had to get a job delivering weed, and you needed to kind of work your way up the system.”

When she came home with the cash from her efforts, her parents’ conservative household took a no-questions-asked policy. She would work for the service for a few years. If you ordered cannabis from the service between 2nd and Gold and Murray Hill, Willey would show up right out of school with her Catholic schoolgirl uniform and 1.2 grams for $120 bucks. Willey said it sounds steep, but buyers had to say yes or they would get a visit from a large Puerto Rican man.

Her parents still turned a blind eye.

“I think that they thought it stopped for a little bit in college,” Willey said, smiling. “As all Indian people and children when they’re born, they tell you that you can be many different types of a doctor. You can just pick a type of doctor. So, obviously, I did not want to be a doctor.”

CAM Owner Anna Willey

Growing & Coding

Willey noted her sister skipped the medical school plan too, but her mom still tells people she’s a pharmacist. By 10th grade, Willey was bodega hopping in Harlem and the Lower East Side looking for the newest issues of High Times. After graduating from college, Willey would move west to Colorado in 1998.

When she arrived, she immediately met a grower named John from Fort Collins. He offered to set her up in a grow house. There she would learn to grow. She laughed, noting how much easier it is in the modern era to get the info you need, “Nowadays, you just get on to YouTube. And it’s crazy, right?”

When she did get on the internet forums, she felt there was a ton of support. She was amazed by just how many people were open to helping her. With her background in tech, she also didn’t have any fears about covering her tracks as she searched for the answers to her growroom problems on sites that would eventually be shut down by the feds.

Nevertheless, her first round would not go to plan.

“All males,” Willey said. “And I’m talking about ripe ball sacks covering the plant. I kept posting to IC Mag and Overgrow like, ‘These are new strains.’ I thought I created a new strain.”

Willey noted that pollen stuck around for about a year and a half and caused a lot of headaches. The first strains she would work with included DJ Short’s Blueberry and Fort Collins Cough.

Through all this, Willey continued writing code for IBM and Computer Associates. It was the early beginnings of the move towards automation in as many sectors as possible. Willey’s STEM background from childhood through college would give her much more faith in technology than her peers back then. She applied this knowledge to the grow.

“So it was a huge breakthrough, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m breaking through in technology,’ because I was one of the first people to do automated grows,” Willey said. “So everyone that I met would boast about hand watering and [was] also constantly talking about how they want to be there when the lights are on.”

Willey thought the idea of needing to be completely hands-on was dumb, and people needed to learn about timers. What if they got sick or had a flat tire on the way to the grow? There are a thousand reasons to have some redundancy when talking about getting your lights powered up on time.

During that era in Colorado, she would start growing in rockwool. Eventually, she would make the move to Hydroton and use it through 2009 before making the jump to an ebb-and-flow system with Hydroton.

While continuing to develop her skills, she would open Colorado’s third dispensary. Her first fully legal grow would be 30 lights, the next 150. She thought she was in heaven.

The next major factor in her rise came in 2011. She decided she was going to get her general contractor’s license.

“It took me two years. I worked under a bunch of subcontractors, mechanical, plumbing, electrical. l learned enough about those trades to actually get a general contractor license,” Willey said. “And then I was able to do my own builds. That’s when it was over. I had a 40,000-square-foot warehouse. I had 760 lights. I had three warehouses.”

Her weed started to take off. As demand increased, she started the ongoing quest of growing as much fire as possible that she’s on to this day. At the peak of her Colorado cultivation capacity she would have 1,250 lights.

“We would literally do it like New York City deli style,” Willey said. “When we ran out of weed that day, we were out of weed.”

The store would close early every day for three years. Every single day they ran out of weed, even as Willey expanded she just couldn’t keep up. Another thing helping push numbers was the fact hers was the first shop in Colorado offering half-eighths. This allowed people to mix and match more than other dispensaries. When Willey worked the counter herself, the half-eighths weighed a little heavy. The patients loved it.

La Paleta

Moving on from Magic Dust

In 2013 and 2014, she started plotting her move west. She was already getting a lot of her genetics from California.

“I was very aware of how much better California cannabis was; even five months old light deps were severely better than what I call the magic dust,” Willey said.

No matter how good Willey was at growing pot, it was never going to be able to compete with the cannabis being grown at sea level in California. Even to this day, indoor farms skirting the waster in the San Francisco Bay Area are considered among the best in the world.

Willey would eventually sell everything she owned. But as with much of her life, it all started on the forums. They were alive and well through the cannabis floods and droughts of the mid-2010s. As she continued to watch the landscape, it was very obvious to her that those with the heat were in the best shape. California was the land of the heat, and it was before the price crashes we’d start to see later in the decade.

When she arrived in California to start her conquests in 2018, she wanted to get on METRC as soon as possible. Her buildout ended up taking eight months, and everything was on the books. Her friends already here balked at the idea, but her first California runs were basically as compliant as they could be at that moment.

But how did she end up in Sacramento? In her early goings, she would attempt to get set up in Oakland. She quickly realized it was not the most friendly place for cannabis with everyone from the city council to the landlords lining up to milk the industry. But as she worked to fund the California move, one of the jobs she was doing was licensing work. Through that work, she would become familiar with just how friendly Sacramento is to cannabis businesses.

“I noticed it was the number one place that was super friendly to other people. I had a great connection with the Connected team, and Sacramento was celebrating Connected, giving them a store license, whatever they applied for,” Willey said of the observation. “So I was like, ‘OK, this town seems much friendlier.’”

There is an argument to be made that her decision to move to Sacramento has crafted one of the biggest cannabis companies to hit the top-shelf market following legalization. There was always going to be a boutique class of bougie top shelf selection for those who wanted to pay big money. When Willey hit Sacramento, it was the beginning of that kind of quality being normalized for everyone.

She laughed and noted it wasn’t that easy out the gate. When she went all-in on California and sold her last Colorado warehouse, she brought 19 OGs with her that nobody wanted. It was all good though! She found a guy in the desert with a Harvard business degree that would buy all this pot, but he quickly realized consumers couldn’t tell the difference between light deps and indoor, especially if they couldn’t look before they bought it. He ended up making the switch to pounds he could get for $850 as opposed to Willey’s indoor.

“He ditched me for deps in October,” Willey said. “It was brutal and hilarious at the same time.”

Eventually, Willey would get her hands on cuts more suited to Californians’ tastes. As soon as CAM flowers started hitting shelves, it was always priced at least $5 cheaper than things of comparable quality, sometimes even $15 bucks cheaper as others attempted to cash in on whatever hype had gotten them that far. Shelf by shelf, CAM began to dot California from north to south.

One of the reasons for that competitive price point was how much cheaper it was to operate in Sacramento compared to her initial potential home in Oakland.

“I got super lucky with my landlord in Sacramento,” Willey said. “It was still insanely expensive, $1.75 a square foot. But the building was good. We all had a good foundation and relatively good TPO [thermoplastic polyolefin] roofs. They already had some basic power, 800 to 1,000 amps. It had some good bones if you can say that about a building.”

Things were eventually going well. Someone offered to buy her out. But two days before making the deal she pulled out. She was destined to grow the heat for the masses, how could she stop now?

In the end, it would work out.

“Everybody talks about how we got all these investors and whatever. I got lucky and I got one partner and that’s all I really needed. And then one of my closest friends, a grower in Colorado at Grand LAX, Josh Granville, had already come up before, and he was, you know, doing his own thing.”

Mystery Machine

Easy as Apple Pie

Eventually, Willey got her hands on some Apple Pie. It was some kind of bastardized version of Apple Fritter that her friends at the kings of apple weed, Lumpy’s, had vetted as something close to the original Fritter but not exactly the same thing. This was also the strain that put CAM on my radar back in the day. It was the absolute top of the mountain. There is a strong argument to be made at the peak of apple terps hype a couple of years ago, the three most popular strains were CAM’s Apple Pie, Lumpy’s original Fritter phenos, and Alien Labs’s Atomic Apple. The trio firmly separated themselves from the pack.

She would send a box of that primo Apple Pie to Berner from Cookies. His lineup of dispensaries is now one of CAM’s biggest clients. Willey transitioned to all the doors that have opened for her over the years through her dedication to the flame and regardless of plumbing.

“My experience of being a woman in cannabis is that I’ve just been surrounded by older brothers, mentors, people that have embraced me and shown me so much love and respect,” Willey said. “I’m not here to tell people there is not sexism or misogyny inside the industry. I’m not here to say that. I’m just here to talk about my experience and my experience with all these people that are in cannabis that have moms and sisters and girlfriends, and whatever, like really treated me as such.”

Things would change a lot from those early runs. Gone were the Harvard MBAs that were flush with newly raised capital and ready to buy anything in a jar that tested half decent. Then came the consolidation of many companies. Those with the heat like Willey would be survivors, but it was nuts. She started seeing things like dehydrated nugs going through testing to make the THC numbers higher. She didn’t even realize for a bit you could shop around the same batch for the highest THC numbers since there are no standardized cannabis lab operating procedures (plans are set to change next year.).

“And it’s about to happen. The homogenization of the testing process is going to be revolutionary for cannabis in California. I really do believe that because you will finally be able to grow a lot of strains [that you can’t in a THC-driven market,]” Willey said.

She’s been sitting on cuts for years, waiting for the moment lab testing wouldn’t be as big a factor. About 80% of them are mother plants; the rest are in tissue culture.

We asked Willey if there was a moment where she knew her weed was doing better than most as the walls were caving in on the California industry. She explained it’s not about the hundreds of stores she finds herself in but the sell-through. That’s when she knows she is connecting with the shop’s clientele.

“The one thing I really want to convey is how lucky I am with how much love California has shown some small transplant,” Willey said. “I have the best team. I can’t like, I mean, I want like a whole segment of this conversation to be about how lucky I got.”

camdispensary.com

This article was originally published in the November 2022 issue of High Times Magazine.

The post The CAM Come Up | Excessive Occasions appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

First Name: Cam Heyward rips concept of latest NFL defensive penalty; Brian Flores is a finalist for Arizona teaching job

Daily SF News — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 01:58:11 +0000

On Monday’s “First Call,” Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end Cameron Heyward spoke out against a possible NFL rule that could make life even harder for defensive players.

Brian Flores is now a finalist for the Arizona Cardinals coaching job. Myles Garrett was injured during Pro Bowl games.

And the NHL is back after the All-Star break.

More for Flo’

Brian Flores, assistant defensive back for the Steelers, gets a second interview for the vacant position as head coach with the Arizona Cardinals.

So says Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.

#Steelers senior defensive assistant and LBs coach Brian Flores is expected to have a second interview with the #AZCardinals for their HC job on Wednesday, a source said. He’ll also be interviewing for the #Broncos DC job the day before – and is a top candidate for the #Vikings DC job.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) February 5, 2023

In addition to these possible openings, Flores was also a candidate for defensive coordinator positions with the Atlanta Falcons and the Cleveland Browns. Both of these positions are now filled.

SI.com’s Albert Breer reports that Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo and Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka are the other two remaining contenders in Arizona. He also says Arizona’s own defensive coordinator, Vance Joseph, and Bengal’s offensive coordinator, Brian Callahan, have been eliminated from consideration.

go too far

It seems that the NFL is thinking hard about getting rid of the “hip drop” tackle. This method of tackling resulted in a broken leg for the Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Pollard during a playoff game in San Francisco.

After Mahomes yesterday, another textbook mechanism for high ankle sprains for Tony Pollard. This one seems worse, additional concern for fracture. Hip drop tackle again – not always a “dirty” game, but a technique with a high risk of injury for the ball carrier pic.twitter.com/1Tl78OFkPo

— NRL PHYSIO (@nrlphysio) January 23, 2023

Last week said Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said the technique could be eliminated. A hip drop is when the defender grabs the ball carrier from behind and then slides down the offensive player, dropping his body weight onto the ball carrier’s legs. This move has been banned by the National Rugby League in Australia.

Through ProFootballTalk.com, the NFL’s Competitions Committee is expected to consider new rules that would prevent this type of play, and Sills and the league’s medical staff would also be involved in those discussions.

Steelers defense attorney Cam Heyward waved the idea on Friday.

That’s so stupid. How the hell are we ever supposed to get boys on the floor. You think too much

— Cam Heyward (@CamHeyward) February 4, 2023

Not only that, but when hip drop tackles become penalties, the weekly controversy over how many are being called and how inconsistent the calls are will lead to chaos.

More sport

• Tim Benz: We keep hearing about “volatility” in the Penguins’ performance – now it’s time to fix it
• Miles Boykin made a fit for the Steelers during Season 1, but will he be back for 2nd?
• Mark Madden’s Hot Take: Hockey just doesn’t know how to be cool

Garret is gone

Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett suffered a dislocated toe while attending Sunday’s Pro Bowl games, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. X-rays came back negative. But Garrett hobbled off the field in Las Vegas.

Probably not what Cleveland wants to see. Myles Garrett hobbles away. pic.twitter.com/3lprj1kOpw

— Darren Carr (@DCarr75) February 5, 2023

Meanwhile, Jalen Ramsey landed on Tyreek Hill during the flag football game while trying to pull a flag on Davante Adams.

Jalen Ramsey decided to beat Stick @cheetah at the Flag Pro-Bowl pic.twitter.com/naC15a3G9m

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) February 5, 2023

Ramsey ended up getting a personal foul penalty.

Back in progress

When the NHL resumes play after the All-Star break, the Penguins won’t be part of the action. They won’t play again until Tuesday. Then the Colorado Avalanche visits the PPG Paints Arena.

However, some teams within the Metropolitan Division will start again on Monday. Third-placed New York Rangers (62 points) host Calgary at Madison Square Garden. The New Jersey Devils, currently second in the table with 68 points, welcome the Vancouver Canucks. And the New York Islanders (55 points) have to take on the Flyers (51 points) in Philadelphia.

The Penguins have 57 points, good for fifth place in the division and last place in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Carolina Hurricanes lead the league with 76 points. They reached the All-Star break on a seven-game winning streak.

Tim Benz is a contributor to the Tribune Review. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless otherwise noted.

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How Cam Newton’s Contract Impacts The San Francisco 49ers And Jimmy Garoppolo

Daily SF News — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 21:20:24 +0000

How Cam Newton’s contract with the Patriots affected Jimmy Garoppolo and the San Francisco 49ers. … [+] (Photo by Adam Glanzman / Getty Images)

Getty Images

The New England Patriots’ quarterback situation, having suffered their first loss since 2000, has recently come into focus. In the early stages of the off-season, this was a possible reunion with Jimmy Garoppolo.

Things seem to have taken a dramatic turn on this front as the NFL Free Agency is set to open in the next few days. That includes New England choosing to re-sign their quarterback Cam Newton with a one-year contract worth up to $ 14 million.

To say this is surprising would be an understatement. After sustaining both a shoulder and Lisfranc injuries in the latter stages of his career with the Carolina Panthers, Newton signed a one-year $ 1.75 million deal with New England last July.

He responded by making eight touchdown passes against 10 interceptions in 15 starts and adding 12 points on the floor. The former NFL MVP appeared to be a shell of his former self, leading to speculation that New England would leave him after a season. That obviously didn’t happen.

MORE FROM FORBESThe New England Patriots sign Cam Newton again for one yearBy Tommy Beer

What the Cam Newton Contract Means for Patriots Quarterback Situation

It seems New England didn’t want to wait around with quarterback. The free agent market in this position is thin. They also weren’t able to beat Matthew Stafford and Carson Wentz before making blockbuster trades earlier in the off-season.

However, all of this has a fairly large component. Newton’s new contract with the Patriots includes incentives. It’s not just a one-year $ 14 million contract. We’ll have to wait for the details, but it’s safe to assume that his base pay is just backup quarterback money – an upgraded version of last year’s deal.

The Patriots must spend north of $ 70 million below the 2021 NFL salary cap. Reality tells us that this Newton treaty will cut into this one by a very small margin. What does that mean? New England isn’t done buying seasoned quarterback options.

New England Patriots can still do a piece for Jimmy Garoppolo

Jimmy Garoppolo could still be in the game for the Patriots. (Photo by Adam Glanzman / Getty Images)

Getty Images

This is the main setting for New England and the San Francisco 49ers. The two were connected in a near-endless loop after ending their disastrous performances in 2020. Obviously the link contains a Jimmy Garoppolo.

Several former Patriots players have come out in favor of the idea of trading Garoppolo after sending him to San Francisco in the middle of the 2017 season. It’s also now clear that head coach Bill Belichick wasn’t an advocate of the Garoppolo trade. He considered the earlier round two election to be Tom Brady’s heir.

Fast forward a few years and Garoppolo could possibly be in a store. Despite their opposite public stance, the 49ers have been looking for an upgrade since the beginning of the off-season. The 29-year-old Garoppolo has had an injury-ridden 2020 season in which he missed all but six games due to injuries. He has failed to transform himself into the elite signaler that San Francisco expected when he was traded for him in 2017.

Complicating matters even further from the 49er’s perspective is that Garoppolo is expected to count towards the cap in 2021 at $ 26.4 million. For a team with more than 40 free agents and in a less than outstanding cap, this does not seem to be sustainable.

MORE FROM FORBESBreakdown of a potential trade with Jimmy Garoppolo to the New England PatriotsBy Vincent Frank

The problem here is that San Francisco doesn’t want to restructure or renew Garoppolo’s contract as that would tie him financially with the team beyond the 2021 season. At the moment, General Manager John Lynch and Co. would only suffer a dead cap of $ 2.8 million from the publication or trading of Garoppolo. That changes with an expansion or restructuring.

What does it all mean? If the 49ers find an upgrade at Quarterback, Garoppolo could still very well be available. It is this delayed process that likely resulted in New England pulling the trigger on Newton in the first place.

That in no way means that Garoppolo is off the table for New England. Assuming the Newton Treaty is structured as I outlined above, then it is likely to be reviewing the backup money without most of these incentives.

A deal for Garoppolo would cost New England roughly $ 25 million against the 2021 NFL salary cap. This is a non-starter. Rather, the experienced quarterback would have to agree to a minor contract extension and thereby lower his upper limit. It’s part of the conversation when it comes to a hypothetical trade.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback situation remains unresolved

The 49ers could still do very well with Deshaun Watson. (Photo by Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)

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It can be argued that San Francisco’s sedentary lifestyle on the quarterback front is directly related to Deshaun Watson’s situation in Houston. Although the Texan star has requested a deal, Houston’s brass has refused to discuss deals with interested teams.

That is an important setting here. Simply put, the length of time between San Francisco and New England to work out a Garoppolo deal just didn’t match. The 49ers are on Watson. You have probably already prepared a trade offer for Houston.

MORE FROM FORBESAnalysis of the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback options for the 2021 NFL seasonBy Vincent Frank

This is about how long the process was between Watson and the Texans. San Francisco won’t leave Garoppolo without a plan behind the scenes. Texans’ unwillingness to talk about a Watson deal changed the dynamic behind the scenes.

The only way San Francisco would deal with Garoppolo would be if a deal was tacitly made for Watson or someone like New York Jets quarterback Sam Darnold. Neither of the two options has yet been implemented.

Next week is going to be big on the 49ers quarterback front

Could Jet quarterback Sam Darnold be an option for the 49ers? (Photo by Al Pereira / Getty Images)

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Suggestions are that San Francisco is also high on the aforementioned Sam Darnold. He could either be made to compete with Garoppolo for the starting job or replace the incumbent altogether.

A quarterback competition between the two in the summer wouldn’t make much sense, however.

For starters, any team that Darnold acquires would have a $ 25 million decision to make in the final year of their rookie contract in 2022.

Second, adding Darnold to the mix wouldn’t go well with Garoppolo. He’s just over a year away from leading the 49ers to a shocking Super Bowl appearance. The team’s lack of confidence in him would be compounded in this scenario and potentially end all restructuring talks.

Rather, the idea would be for Darnold to come in and replace Garoppolo in the middle. It’s expected to count about $ 5 million toward the cap in 2021, a number that would help San Francisco navigate an off-season with a lowered NFL salary cap.

MORE FROM FORBESDeshaun Watson Trade Rumors: 49ers Must Do Anything To Acquire QuarterbackBy Vincent Frank

Even then, it’s an open question whether head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch see Darnold as an upgrade over Garoppolo. Objectively, that would be a tough sell. It’s just not that easy. Finances would certainly play a role in this situation. It’s not a zero-sum game.

When the free agency gets going here, there will be a solution to the Garoppolo situation in San Francisco. It could lead the 49ers to follow suit with their public stance that Garoppolo will be the starter of the first week. It could also involve a blockbuster trade for another quarterback. We didn’t get any closer to a solution just because New England kept Cam Newton.

Conclusion: Jimmy Garoppolo on the Patriots is still in the game

This is a long drawn-out conclusion that Friday’s news is not moving the needle too much for either New England or San Francisco.

The Patriots could still act very well for Garoppolo while still having the financial resources to improve their fledgling list during the free agency.

San Francisco wouldn’t do a Jimmy Garoppolo deal without a specific plan behind the scenes. In fact, the 49ers pushback might suggest two things here. They’re either actually going to be sold when Garoppolo gets back in shape in 2021, or they think a deal for Deshaun Watson might be in sight.

Stay tuned.

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