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As I warned previously, as Tom Brady fades into eventual obscurity, PK's man-crush will shift over to Jimmy Garoppolo. :baghead: But PK does mention Brady over and over again. I swear if PK was reporting on the Apocalypse he'd sneak Tom Brady's name in there somewhere.
All the politics and other b.s.
has been left out of this post but if you want to read it anyway click the link below. You're welcome. 
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/08/13/jimmy-garoppolo-49ers-camp-fmia-peter-king/
FMIA: Smile, Jimmy! Garoppolo in Picture Perfect Situation As a QB
By Peter King
Getty Images
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Cool scene at 49ers camp Sunday afternoon: Two young towheads, maybe 6 and 3, one wearing a Jerry Rice “80” jersey and one wearing a Jimmy Garoppolo “10” jersey, waiting for Jimmy Garoppolo Himself to come down the autograph line after a training camp practice. And here comes Garoppolo, in his black practice jersey and swoon-for-me thick stubbly beard.
“Hi guys!” Garoppolo says, taking a black Sharpie and signing the Rice kid’s hat and the Garoppolo kid’s jersey. This is one of those autograph periods the famous players have to do. Garoppolo, though, is in charm mode, and looks like he really wants to give these two kids a memory for life.
He looks into the younger kid’s eyes, smiles, and says, “Would you guys like a picture?”
Kid in Garoppolo jersey says: “Nahhhhh.”
Now this is an “Access Hollywood” or “Extra” moment, with a Mario Lopez voiceover: Northern Californian stiffs Garoppolo! We’ll show you the new Brady’s shocked reaction! Except the new star of stars laughs along with the aghast Mom of the towheads—he has to love someone not wanting something from him these days—and after the Mom arranges the kids next to the 49ers quarterback, he bends down to take a smart-phone photo with them.
A year ago, Garoppolo was in his fourth New England training camp, clueless about his future and osmosis-learning how to be great from Tom Brady. His world changed in a flash Oct. 30 with the trade to San Francisco, and lots of other worlds changed too. Coach Kyle Shanahan’s world changed; he thought he’d be mortgaging Niner millions to try to sign former pet QB Kirk Cousins as a 2018 free agent.
GM John Lynch’s world changed; he thought he’d be in serious scouting mode, trying to figure whether Josh Allen or Sam Darnold or Baker Mayfield would be his long-term quarterback heir to Montana and Young. Even the great Tom Brady’s world changed, because now he would no longer have the hot breath of Garoppolo on his neck, and he would no longer have to wonder if the Patriots would pay Garoppolo starter money to serve as pressure on him for the next two or three years.
It’s a crazy story, and I’m not even talking about the TMZ adult film star date video, or the fact that Garoppolo, after seven NFL starts, has a contract averaging $6.5 million more per year than Aaron Rodgers’ contract. All of it is crazy.
But with more logic than you think.
I love the potential of Garoppolo, I love the Niners taking the gamble of making Garoppolo the third-highest-paid player in NFL history after seven starts. I love the GM and coach putting their careers on the line for a guy with 12 career touchdown passes. I love the story (more than the 2018 team, honestly), and I love one throw I saw Sunday on a baking 87 degree day in a place that has hope for the first time since Jim Harbaugh roamed the land.
I was walking the course with Tony Romo, the quarterback technician and diagnostician, last month when the subject of Garoppolo came up. Romo warmed to it. Not just because they both went to that mighty football power Eastern Illinois University either. Romo, the CBS lead analyst who might love watching quarterback tape more than hitting a solid 7-iron near the pin, loves Garoppolo’s mechanics … and his early-career environment.
“You cannot be in a better situation early on than Jimmy,” Romo said. “He’s been with some of the best minds you could ever be around in the National Football League. He got the foundation of Bill Belichick, who probably set his routine for success for the rest of his career. He was around Tom Brady for three-plus years, learning through osmosis if nothing else.
Tom’s ability at the line of scrimmage to do something, and then for Jimmy to go back and study the how and why … I am sure Jimmy saw so much subtlety that took Brady years to learn through experience. Jimmy could just see it in practice and he’s like, Oh, now I see why he did that.You get that ability to improve at a much faster rate than you otherwise would have on your own. It’s really a priceless thing for young quarterbacks to be behind a great quarterback.
“And now with Kyle Shanahan, he’s getting an offensive genius. I don’t throw that term around lightly—Kyle really is. I would argue there’s three or four guys in the league who really separate themselves as head coaches or offensive coordinators getting chunk plays. You’re dropping back and you’re having a guy come open 20, 25 yards downfield. That’s a huge load off a quarterback’s shoulders for always having to produce on third down to move the chains. That’s where Kyle really separates himself.”
Belichick, Brady, Shanahan, heir to Montana/Young. It’s lunacy, how much has been laid on Garoppolo’s shoulders.
In a quiet moment Sunday afternoon, in the bowels of the stadium he hopes to make the best homefield advantage in sports, Garoppolo considred the star-turn his life has taken.
”I like to think about it at certain times,” he said. “When I’m in here working, you just don’t have any time to think about it. But every once in a while it’s good to sit back and smell the roses as my dad would put it … just realize how good do you really have it. I like to, every once in a while, take a step back and realize where you’re at. Not now. Now, it’s grind mode. Don’t really have a lot of time for that.”
I fear we have—and I put me near the top of the list—jumped the line of NFL hierarchy with these Niners. It might be too soon. Garoppolo and his $27.5-million average compensation over the next five years (only Matt Ryan and Kirk Cousins are higher-paid QBs) are keystones to the Niners getting great again. But their top two running backs—Jerick McKinnon and Matt Breida—got hurt over the weekend, and the only franchise-type wideout is ex-Bill Marquise Goodwin. For now, the skill position depth on the 49ers is awful. Which puts even more pressure on Garoppolo.
He probably won’t fret that. I talked to quite a few Niners about Garoppolo and his early impact with the franchise. The most interesting thing I heard was from veteran tight end Garrett Celek, when I asked when he knew Garoppolo was a keeper.
“The first time he got in the huddle with us,” Celek said.
Huh?
“I’d said maybe two words to him,” Celek said. “I didn’t know what kind of guy he was. He came into the huddle for the very first time, and he talked to us and called the play like he’d been in there 10 years. It was awesome.”
If the Niners win this year, it will be because of Garoppolo’s quick decision-making and accurate right arm. This team is not talented enough yet to win 12 games in a tough NFC West. The level of talent versus, say, the Rams, is lacking. But a great quarterback levels the playing field. Shanahan thinks Garoppolo got better by witnessing Brady, regardless of how much Brady helped the kid who might one day take his job.
“Tom’s not sitting there trying to be his teacher every day,” Shanahan said. “Tom’s taking care of Tom, as he should. You get to sit there and watch really the GOAT do it. It’s cool to see. You can envision how you wanna handle that situation when you get in. But I still think that a lot of that, he’s gotta get in and do it. He’s gotta find his way to do it. You can’t be someone else.”
Here’s the way Garoppolo was the anti-Brady on Sunday: In a two-minute drill, on the first snap, Garoppolo, under a heavy rush, lowered his arm angle and throw sidearm to Raheem Mostern. Beautiful throw, and not a long one. But Garoppolo know when to take a short gain and when to risk his field position for a long one. This was the right choice at the right time. “I don’t think he at all tries to be Tom,” said a friend, Vikings backup quarterback Trevor Siemian.
There is one thing you don’t know yet about Garoppolo. He’s a little bit of a wise guy. That means he fits into this team well.
“I like Coach Shanahan,” Garoppolo said, “because we’ve both got that smart-ass thing going on. Just our attitude—that little bit of sarcasm. I grew up with three brothers, so if you can’t make fun of someone or can’t take being made fun of, you’re going to have a tough go.”
We don’t know yet if they’ll be Walsh-Montana, or even 60 percent of that. It sure is fun to contemplate, though.
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Lions: Goalposts and Gargantuan Backs
ALLEN PARK, Mich. — So Matt Patricia doesn’t say much, or allow his players to say much, about the inner stuff of the Lions. When I asked Matthew Stafford about Patricia, he said some laudatory things about what a smart and prepared guy he was, then said he’ll keep everything specific behind closed doors. Okay. But I did learn one very Patricia thing this week, about his attention to detail.
So when Patricia got the job and toured the Lions facility in suburban Allen Park, he looked around the practice fields and thought, Something’s missing. This is weird. He asked a couple of Lions’ people why there were no goalposts on the practice fields. He queried GM Bob Quinn, who’d gone two years at the helm of the team with no permanent goalposts (just temp posts, wheeled out during practice).
Patricia said to Quinn, “The quarterbacks need that as a landmark.” Receivers too, on post routes. Patricia was befuddled about it. So when I showed up, I saw four permanent goalposts on the two long practice fields: two with standard width, and two with narrow width, for the kickers to be tested with tougher kicks.
One other thing that surprised me: The three solid backs in camps are Theo Riddick, rookie second-rounder Kerryon Johnson and LeGarrette Blount, who I believe in on pace to play for all 32 teams in the NFL. “I can try!” Blount told me. “But I might age out!” On his sixth team now, Blount is 31, and quite valuable. Two 11-on-11 periods in the practice I saw, and both had 247-pound power back Blount, the closest thing to Jerome Bettis (but not really close) in football today, carry the ball on the first snap.
So what is Patricia doing? A couple of things, as I read it. He wants to establish a toughness on the offense that he thinks just wasn’t there in the last couple of years, when the running game has stunk. Two: He wants to tell his players, The days of living and dying with Matthew Stafford are over.
Vikings: A Helpful Building Block
EAGEN, Minn. — In 1995, the Jacksonville Jaguars spent $121 million to build a shiny new stadium close to downtown, using some parts of the old Gator Bowl structure.
Some 23 years later, the Minnesota Vikings spent $140 million to build a training facility.
The Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center, a training and team office complex on the east side of Minneapolis, joins The Star (Dallas’ complex) as NFL training kingpins and overtakes Seattle’s beautiful facility on a lake south of downtown. It includes:
• Four grass practice fields (two heated), an 6,500-seat outdoor stadium where the Vikings can scrimmage and where local high schools are booking games, and an indoor facility with a ceiling high enough to avoid punts hitting it.
• A stand-up three-person Cryotherapy chamber, where players go for three-minute treatments to alleviate muscle pain and inflammation and improve blood flow. Some players, like tight end Kyle Rudolph, go twice a day.
The cafeteria menu at the TCO Performance Center. (Peter King/NBC Sports)
• A cafeteria that does not contain an ounce of junk. Last Wednesday, for lunch, you could have had a cup of pinto bean stew, and a plate of grilled Arctic char, bulgar lentil pilaf, grilled asparagus and a spinach/kale/beet salad.
• A outdoor sand pit for rehab and training for all leg injuries and leg fitness.
• A pool room. Here, there are three pools: a cold pool, a whirlpool, and a pool with a treadmill with a sort of elevator; the lower you’re dipped in the pool, the most energy you expend while running or walking on the treadmill. On the end are several more traditional single-person ice tubs.
• A draft room/personnel meeting room with rising auditorium seating that is so advanced that … well, I was shown the room off-the-record, so I can’t talk about the specifics. But it’s other-worldly. Very 2032.
One more thing: The locker room has fireplaces.
“I feel like there’s no place in the United States that has a facility so well-designed to take care of the players,” Rudolph told me. “No pro team. No college team—and college teams are in an arms race with those facilities they have. No national-team training center. Usually in the off-season I go to Newport Beach for six to eight weeks to work out and live. It’s 75 degrees. Every day’s perfect. But this year I stayed here.”
Where, presumably, every day was perfect inside this nirvana of a facility.
San Diego at Arizona: An Eminently Forgettable Game
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Thoughts from the Cards’ 24-17 win over the Chargers on Saturday night:
1. How can people pay real money to see these games? I have covered this game for 34 years and said it 34 times. This game took 3 hours, 37 minutes to play, had 32 called penalties (26 accepted, for 265 yards), saw five turnovers, saw one pass from the two starting quarterbacks (Sam Bradford one, Philip Rivers zero), and showed a savior quarterback in Josh Rosen who’s got a lot of work to do. It generally bored us to tears.
2. Everyone inside the Cardinals expects GM Steve Keim—suspended five weeks for a DUI charge, fined $200,000 by the league and ordered to undergo alcohol rehab—back when his suspension is over next week. Keim’s a notoriously early-in-the-building guy, and one Card insider said he plans to be in the building on his first day back at 4:30 a.m.
That’s all well and good—but Keim knows he’ll be watched closely by his franchise and the league. His first order of business in a week: trying to get the David Johnson contract done. Neither Johnson nor the Cards wants the talented running back—the NFL leader in yards from scrimmage and touchdowns in 2016—to play the season at his scheduled $1.88 million without making a rich adjustment for future years.
3. I find myself rooting hard for Geno Smith, who threw a lovely 47-yard contested touchdown bomb to fellow ex-Giant Geremy Davis on the prettiest play of the night. Smith was a casualty of Ben McAdoo’s Eli Manning benching last year, and I maintain he deserves to be someone’s number two, somewhere. I like him better than Cardale Jones with the Chargers, even though it seems fruitless to fight for that job. Philip Rivers hasn’t missed a start at quarterback for the Chargers since Drew Breesplayed for the franchise. That was in 2005. When Kylie Jenner was 8.
4. Rivers is perky (surprise!) and got bummed only once when I spoke to him Saturday night. The ACL tear suffered by tight end Hunter Henry puts a hurt on this year. But Rivers told me the big thing he sees is how 2017 first-round wideout Mike Williams, at 6-4 and 220, should take some of the intermediate load that Henry would have shouldered.
5. The Chargers are giddy with the prospect of building on last year, when they started 0-4, finished 9-3 (all three losses to playoff teams), and came within a whisker of making the playoffs. Despite the Henry loss, the addition of vet center Mike Pouncey to anchor a shaky line is a plus.
6. Big year for Sam Bradford. In the last four calendar years, he’s been property of the Rams (2014), Eagles (2015), Vikings (2016 and ’17) and now the Cards—with the hot breath of Josh Rosen breathing down Bradford’s neck. Talk to the Cardinals, and you can feel it. They love Rosen.
But there’s something weird about a quarterback who is so efficient and so well-liked but who gets shuffled from team to team like he’s some kind of Mike Glennon. Bradford doesn’t have long to prove he’s the franchise guy people thought he’d be when taken number one overall in 2010.
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One Question Interview
I’ll do this occasionally through the season—ask a significant person a question I’m curious about. Here’s new Minnesota offensive coordinator John DeFilippo, who brings some lessons from his tenure as quarterback coach under Doug Pederson to Mike Zimmer’s staff, and who is likely to be a strong prospect for a head-coaching job in 2019 or 2020:
FMIA: What are the most valuable lessons you take from working with Doug Pederson?
DeFilippo: “Two things I’m going to give you. Number one, trust in his assistant coaches. He trusted [offensive coordinator] Frank Reich to pull the whole thing together. He and Frank both trusted all the offensive assistants to have our own areas and be the master of that area. So the trust on that coaching staff was earned—if Doug put you in charge of red-area plays, he trusted you to be the best in the league at knowing the best things to do in that area.
Number two: Coach is gonna do it his way. His way is pedal to the medal. He wants to score on every play. He gets upset sometimes because we don’t score on every play, in a good way. He’s going to stay on the attack when there’s that point in the game where you can either try to put an opponent away or just kind of ride it out.
He’ll always take the shot to put the opponent away. And the players followed. In all we did, we locked arm and arm, here we are, and prepared the same no matter who we played. Our term for that year was, ‘faceless opponent.’ And each week we treated our opponent like it was a faceless person.
“I should also say in my two years in Philadelphia, I never heard Mr. Lurie [owner Jeffrey Lurie] say no to anything we needed. I mean, Nick Foles was having some issues in training camp last year and we bought this special machine to help him in his rehab that cost a lost of money. We also had an emphasis in the draft and free agency on bringing in quality people.
There’s gonna be a time in the NFL season when you’ll have ups and downs—a player mad at a coach, a coach mad at a player, an argument on the field. If you have good character people and great locker room character, I think you get over those things. Carson Wentz goes down in December, and as awful as we felt for him, everybody’s ready to step in and do a little more—because we knew we all had to.”
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Intelligent Football
One smart game down for Andrew Luck, 19 to go. (Or more, if the Colts make the playoffs and Luck stays upright.) In his quarter played Thursday night at Seattle, Luck and his quarterback-protecting coach, Frank Reich, made sure Luck stayed clean by throwing quickly compared to his career average.
Luck took 2.45 seconds to throw, on average, for his 11 throws Thursday night.
Per Pro Football Focus metrics, how that 2.45-second average in Seattle compared to the first five seasons of his career:
2012: 2.86 seconds
2013: 2.80 seconds
2014: 2.83 seconds
2015: 2.88 seconds
2016: 2.88 seconds
Average: 2.85 seconds
It’s ridiculously early, but the Colts are off to a good start ensuring Luck doesn’t take the kind of beating he took in the first five years of his career.
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1. I think if you’ve read this column over the years, you know I think Chicago GM Ryan Pace is good at his job, overall. There are times when GMs have to do the right thing for their teams, and the right thing for the Bears is to sign the guy Pace drafted to be the centerpiece of the defense, linebacker Roquan Smith.
This is day 29 of a holdout over something exceedingly minor in the grand scheme of things. It’s got to end. Principle is one thing. We’re talking about the reality of getting the best players ready to play in an uber-competitive division. Drop the fight. Get Smith in camp, and get him ready to chase Aaron Rodgers four weeks from last night at Lambeau.
2. I think I’ve got two recommendations for fantasy football coverage:
• If you’re not a July or August student of the trends and who’s hot and who’s not and who’s going to emerge by Week 3 in a prominent role, you should do one of two things. One: Kidnap Matthew Berry and force him to live with you for the next six weeks. Two: Invest a few bucks in a product that will do everything for you, the Rotoworld Premium Draft Guide. It’s good and ridiculously thorough. (And I was just kidding about kidnapping my friend Matthew Berry—though he would be highly entertaining company.)
• In the interest of good, analytical football coverage mixed with fantasy know-how, check out The 2018 TFS Fantasy Football Draft Guide, by K.C. Joyner. I’ve always loved Joyner’s clarity of thought, and how he makes football analytics so fan-accessible. Check out this from this year’s guide:
“The Jaguars went into last season with the mindset that they didn’t want Blake Bortles throwing any more passes than was absolutely necessary. They obviously changed their minds, as Bortles posted green ratings (upper third in the league among quarterbacks) in multiple attempts categories, the most notable of which was the vertical depth level—passes thrown 11 yards or further downfield. He cut his Bad Decision Rate (mental errors leading to turnover chances) nearly in half from 2016 to 2017, a factor that likely affected the Jaguars’ willingness to let him throw more downfield passes.”
Good stuff. Great stat too on what Tom Brady loses with Brandin Cooks being traded. Cooks accounted for 43 percent of Brady’s deep vertical throws in New England last year, so keep that in mind when deciding how high to draft Brady.
3. I think you did not need any volume on the video to see how ticked off Cam Newton was in his exchange with Kelvin Benjamin on Thursday night. Benjamin, traded from Carolina to Buffalo last season, trashed Newton to Tim Graham of The Athletic,and Newton sought him out before their preseason game, and clearly Benjamin wanted nothing to do with Newton. That ticked off Newton, whose body language said, “You’re dead to me, Benjamin.” Pretty amazing scene.
4. I think Cleveland Browns fans who watched “Hard Knocks” or have been at a camp practice must love Jarvis Landry. Man, this guy wants it. In a meeting in the Browns’ receivers room, Landry goes off on his peers who he thinks are taking the easy way out of practice. “If your hamstring ain’t fallin’ off the bone, if your leg ain’t broke, you should be practicing! Straight up. It’s weakness.
It’s contagious as f—! … It’s over with here, bro! If you’re not hurt, you gotta f—ing practice! That ain’t happenin’ here! That don’t exist! … It’s contagious. It’s contagious.” The Browns have had a lot of guys who’ve made a lot of money and lost a lot of games over the years, and now they’ve got at least one very rich player who’s going to hold his mates accountable.
5. I think I have to admit I really hope Trevor Siemian has a good 13-year career as an NFL backup and sometimes-starter. Such a good and selfless person, sort of like a fellow 250th overall pick in his own draft class, Ryan Fitzpatrick. Ran into Siemian the other day in Minnesota, and he’s so happy to be with a good team, good organization and good starting quarterback, Kirk Cousins.
6. I think this was some interesting advice among former and current peers, from vice president of officiating-turned-FOX rules analyst Dean Blandino to Gene Steratore, the new CBS rules analyst for football and college basketball: “I told Gene: The speed at which things happen, then going on the air, is very fast. And then you will not have time to share everything you want to explain. In the TV world, you may only have 10 seconds to explain something that might be complicated and take far longer. Being concise is a big challenge.” Blandino nailed that.
All the politics and other b.s.
has been left out of this post but if you want to read it anyway click the link below. You're welcome. ***************************************************************************************
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/08/13/jimmy-garoppolo-49ers-camp-fmia-peter-king/
FMIA: Smile, Jimmy! Garoppolo in Picture Perfect Situation As a QB
By Peter King
Getty Images
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Cool scene at 49ers camp Sunday afternoon: Two young towheads, maybe 6 and 3, one wearing a Jerry Rice “80” jersey and one wearing a Jimmy Garoppolo “10” jersey, waiting for Jimmy Garoppolo Himself to come down the autograph line after a training camp practice. And here comes Garoppolo, in his black practice jersey and swoon-for-me thick stubbly beard.
“Hi guys!” Garoppolo says, taking a black Sharpie and signing the Rice kid’s hat and the Garoppolo kid’s jersey. This is one of those autograph periods the famous players have to do. Garoppolo, though, is in charm mode, and looks like he really wants to give these two kids a memory for life.
He looks into the younger kid’s eyes, smiles, and says, “Would you guys like a picture?”
Kid in Garoppolo jersey says: “Nahhhhh.”
Now this is an “Access Hollywood” or “Extra” moment, with a Mario Lopez voiceover: Northern Californian stiffs Garoppolo! We’ll show you the new Brady’s shocked reaction! Except the new star of stars laughs along with the aghast Mom of the towheads—he has to love someone not wanting something from him these days—and after the Mom arranges the kids next to the 49ers quarterback, he bends down to take a smart-phone photo with them.
A year ago, Garoppolo was in his fourth New England training camp, clueless about his future and osmosis-learning how to be great from Tom Brady. His world changed in a flash Oct. 30 with the trade to San Francisco, and lots of other worlds changed too. Coach Kyle Shanahan’s world changed; he thought he’d be mortgaging Niner millions to try to sign former pet QB Kirk Cousins as a 2018 free agent.
GM John Lynch’s world changed; he thought he’d be in serious scouting mode, trying to figure whether Josh Allen or Sam Darnold or Baker Mayfield would be his long-term quarterback heir to Montana and Young. Even the great Tom Brady’s world changed, because now he would no longer have the hot breath of Garoppolo on his neck, and he would no longer have to wonder if the Patriots would pay Garoppolo starter money to serve as pressure on him for the next two or three years.
It’s a crazy story, and I’m not even talking about the TMZ adult film star date video, or the fact that Garoppolo, after seven NFL starts, has a contract averaging $6.5 million more per year than Aaron Rodgers’ contract. All of it is crazy.
But with more logic than you think.
I love the potential of Garoppolo, I love the Niners taking the gamble of making Garoppolo the third-highest-paid player in NFL history after seven starts. I love the GM and coach putting their careers on the line for a guy with 12 career touchdown passes. I love the story (more than the 2018 team, honestly), and I love one throw I saw Sunday on a baking 87 degree day in a place that has hope for the first time since Jim Harbaugh roamed the land.
I was walking the course with Tony Romo, the quarterback technician and diagnostician, last month when the subject of Garoppolo came up. Romo warmed to it. Not just because they both went to that mighty football power Eastern Illinois University either. Romo, the CBS lead analyst who might love watching quarterback tape more than hitting a solid 7-iron near the pin, loves Garoppolo’s mechanics … and his early-career environment.
“You cannot be in a better situation early on than Jimmy,” Romo said. “He’s been with some of the best minds you could ever be around in the National Football League. He got the foundation of Bill Belichick, who probably set his routine for success for the rest of his career. He was around Tom Brady for three-plus years, learning through osmosis if nothing else.
Tom’s ability at the line of scrimmage to do something, and then for Jimmy to go back and study the how and why … I am sure Jimmy saw so much subtlety that took Brady years to learn through experience. Jimmy could just see it in practice and he’s like, Oh, now I see why he did that.You get that ability to improve at a much faster rate than you otherwise would have on your own. It’s really a priceless thing for young quarterbacks to be behind a great quarterback.
“And now with Kyle Shanahan, he’s getting an offensive genius. I don’t throw that term around lightly—Kyle really is. I would argue there’s three or four guys in the league who really separate themselves as head coaches or offensive coordinators getting chunk plays. You’re dropping back and you’re having a guy come open 20, 25 yards downfield. That’s a huge load off a quarterback’s shoulders for always having to produce on third down to move the chains. That’s where Kyle really separates himself.”
Belichick, Brady, Shanahan, heir to Montana/Young. It’s lunacy, how much has been laid on Garoppolo’s shoulders.
In a quiet moment Sunday afternoon, in the bowels of the stadium he hopes to make the best homefield advantage in sports, Garoppolo considred the star-turn his life has taken.
”I like to think about it at certain times,” he said. “When I’m in here working, you just don’t have any time to think about it. But every once in a while it’s good to sit back and smell the roses as my dad would put it … just realize how good do you really have it. I like to, every once in a while, take a step back and realize where you’re at. Not now. Now, it’s grind mode. Don’t really have a lot of time for that.”
I fear we have—and I put me near the top of the list—jumped the line of NFL hierarchy with these Niners. It might be too soon. Garoppolo and his $27.5-million average compensation over the next five years (only Matt Ryan and Kirk Cousins are higher-paid QBs) are keystones to the Niners getting great again. But their top two running backs—Jerick McKinnon and Matt Breida—got hurt over the weekend, and the only franchise-type wideout is ex-Bill Marquise Goodwin. For now, the skill position depth on the 49ers is awful. Which puts even more pressure on Garoppolo.
He probably won’t fret that. I talked to quite a few Niners about Garoppolo and his early impact with the franchise. The most interesting thing I heard was from veteran tight end Garrett Celek, when I asked when he knew Garoppolo was a keeper.
“The first time he got in the huddle with us,” Celek said.
Huh?
“I’d said maybe two words to him,” Celek said. “I didn’t know what kind of guy he was. He came into the huddle for the very first time, and he talked to us and called the play like he’d been in there 10 years. It was awesome.”
If the Niners win this year, it will be because of Garoppolo’s quick decision-making and accurate right arm. This team is not talented enough yet to win 12 games in a tough NFC West. The level of talent versus, say, the Rams, is lacking. But a great quarterback levels the playing field. Shanahan thinks Garoppolo got better by witnessing Brady, regardless of how much Brady helped the kid who might one day take his job.
“Tom’s not sitting there trying to be his teacher every day,” Shanahan said. “Tom’s taking care of Tom, as he should. You get to sit there and watch really the GOAT do it. It’s cool to see. You can envision how you wanna handle that situation when you get in. But I still think that a lot of that, he’s gotta get in and do it. He’s gotta find his way to do it. You can’t be someone else.”
Here’s the way Garoppolo was the anti-Brady on Sunday: In a two-minute drill, on the first snap, Garoppolo, under a heavy rush, lowered his arm angle and throw sidearm to Raheem Mostern. Beautiful throw, and not a long one. But Garoppolo know when to take a short gain and when to risk his field position for a long one. This was the right choice at the right time. “I don’t think he at all tries to be Tom,” said a friend, Vikings backup quarterback Trevor Siemian.
There is one thing you don’t know yet about Garoppolo. He’s a little bit of a wise guy. That means he fits into this team well.
“I like Coach Shanahan,” Garoppolo said, “because we’ve both got that smart-ass thing going on. Just our attitude—that little bit of sarcasm. I grew up with three brothers, so if you can’t make fun of someone or can’t take being made fun of, you’re going to have a tough go.”
We don’t know yet if they’ll be Walsh-Montana, or even 60 percent of that. It sure is fun to contemplate, though.
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Lions: Goalposts and Gargantuan Backs
ALLEN PARK, Mich. — So Matt Patricia doesn’t say much, or allow his players to say much, about the inner stuff of the Lions. When I asked Matthew Stafford about Patricia, he said some laudatory things about what a smart and prepared guy he was, then said he’ll keep everything specific behind closed doors. Okay. But I did learn one very Patricia thing this week, about his attention to detail.
So when Patricia got the job and toured the Lions facility in suburban Allen Park, he looked around the practice fields and thought, Something’s missing. This is weird. He asked a couple of Lions’ people why there were no goalposts on the practice fields. He queried GM Bob Quinn, who’d gone two years at the helm of the team with no permanent goalposts (just temp posts, wheeled out during practice).
Patricia said to Quinn, “The quarterbacks need that as a landmark.” Receivers too, on post routes. Patricia was befuddled about it. So when I showed up, I saw four permanent goalposts on the two long practice fields: two with standard width, and two with narrow width, for the kickers to be tested with tougher kicks.
One other thing that surprised me: The three solid backs in camps are Theo Riddick, rookie second-rounder Kerryon Johnson and LeGarrette Blount, who I believe in on pace to play for all 32 teams in the NFL. “I can try!” Blount told me. “But I might age out!” On his sixth team now, Blount is 31, and quite valuable. Two 11-on-11 periods in the practice I saw, and both had 247-pound power back Blount, the closest thing to Jerome Bettis (but not really close) in football today, carry the ball on the first snap.
So what is Patricia doing? A couple of things, as I read it. He wants to establish a toughness on the offense that he thinks just wasn’t there in the last couple of years, when the running game has stunk. Two: He wants to tell his players, The days of living and dying with Matthew Stafford are over.
Vikings: A Helpful Building Block
EAGEN, Minn. — In 1995, the Jacksonville Jaguars spent $121 million to build a shiny new stadium close to downtown, using some parts of the old Gator Bowl structure.
Some 23 years later, the Minnesota Vikings spent $140 million to build a training facility.
The Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center, a training and team office complex on the east side of Minneapolis, joins The Star (Dallas’ complex) as NFL training kingpins and overtakes Seattle’s beautiful facility on a lake south of downtown. It includes:
• Four grass practice fields (two heated), an 6,500-seat outdoor stadium where the Vikings can scrimmage and where local high schools are booking games, and an indoor facility with a ceiling high enough to avoid punts hitting it.
• A stand-up three-person Cryotherapy chamber, where players go for three-minute treatments to alleviate muscle pain and inflammation and improve blood flow. Some players, like tight end Kyle Rudolph, go twice a day.
The cafeteria menu at the TCO Performance Center. (Peter King/NBC Sports)
• A cafeteria that does not contain an ounce of junk. Last Wednesday, for lunch, you could have had a cup of pinto bean stew, and a plate of grilled Arctic char, bulgar lentil pilaf, grilled asparagus and a spinach/kale/beet salad.
• A outdoor sand pit for rehab and training for all leg injuries and leg fitness.
• A pool room. Here, there are three pools: a cold pool, a whirlpool, and a pool with a treadmill with a sort of elevator; the lower you’re dipped in the pool, the most energy you expend while running or walking on the treadmill. On the end are several more traditional single-person ice tubs.
• A draft room/personnel meeting room with rising auditorium seating that is so advanced that … well, I was shown the room off-the-record, so I can’t talk about the specifics. But it’s other-worldly. Very 2032.
One more thing: The locker room has fireplaces.
“I feel like there’s no place in the United States that has a facility so well-designed to take care of the players,” Rudolph told me. “No pro team. No college team—and college teams are in an arms race with those facilities they have. No national-team training center. Usually in the off-season I go to Newport Beach for six to eight weeks to work out and live. It’s 75 degrees. Every day’s perfect. But this year I stayed here.”
Where, presumably, every day was perfect inside this nirvana of a facility.
San Diego at Arizona: An Eminently Forgettable Game
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Thoughts from the Cards’ 24-17 win over the Chargers on Saturday night:
1. How can people pay real money to see these games? I have covered this game for 34 years and said it 34 times. This game took 3 hours, 37 minutes to play, had 32 called penalties (26 accepted, for 265 yards), saw five turnovers, saw one pass from the two starting quarterbacks (Sam Bradford one, Philip Rivers zero), and showed a savior quarterback in Josh Rosen who’s got a lot of work to do. It generally bored us to tears.
2. Everyone inside the Cardinals expects GM Steve Keim—suspended five weeks for a DUI charge, fined $200,000 by the league and ordered to undergo alcohol rehab—back when his suspension is over next week. Keim’s a notoriously early-in-the-building guy, and one Card insider said he plans to be in the building on his first day back at 4:30 a.m.
That’s all well and good—but Keim knows he’ll be watched closely by his franchise and the league. His first order of business in a week: trying to get the David Johnson contract done. Neither Johnson nor the Cards wants the talented running back—the NFL leader in yards from scrimmage and touchdowns in 2016—to play the season at his scheduled $1.88 million without making a rich adjustment for future years.
3. I find myself rooting hard for Geno Smith, who threw a lovely 47-yard contested touchdown bomb to fellow ex-Giant Geremy Davis on the prettiest play of the night. Smith was a casualty of Ben McAdoo’s Eli Manning benching last year, and I maintain he deserves to be someone’s number two, somewhere. I like him better than Cardale Jones with the Chargers, even though it seems fruitless to fight for that job. Philip Rivers hasn’t missed a start at quarterback for the Chargers since Drew Breesplayed for the franchise. That was in 2005. When Kylie Jenner was 8.
4. Rivers is perky (surprise!) and got bummed only once when I spoke to him Saturday night. The ACL tear suffered by tight end Hunter Henry puts a hurt on this year. But Rivers told me the big thing he sees is how 2017 first-round wideout Mike Williams, at 6-4 and 220, should take some of the intermediate load that Henry would have shouldered.
5. The Chargers are giddy with the prospect of building on last year, when they started 0-4, finished 9-3 (all three losses to playoff teams), and came within a whisker of making the playoffs. Despite the Henry loss, the addition of vet center Mike Pouncey to anchor a shaky line is a plus.
6. Big year for Sam Bradford. In the last four calendar years, he’s been property of the Rams (2014), Eagles (2015), Vikings (2016 and ’17) and now the Cards—with the hot breath of Josh Rosen breathing down Bradford’s neck. Talk to the Cardinals, and you can feel it. They love Rosen.
But there’s something weird about a quarterback who is so efficient and so well-liked but who gets shuffled from team to team like he’s some kind of Mike Glennon. Bradford doesn’t have long to prove he’s the franchise guy people thought he’d be when taken number one overall in 2010.
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One Question Interview
I’ll do this occasionally through the season—ask a significant person a question I’m curious about. Here’s new Minnesota offensive coordinator John DeFilippo, who brings some lessons from his tenure as quarterback coach under Doug Pederson to Mike Zimmer’s staff, and who is likely to be a strong prospect for a head-coaching job in 2019 or 2020:
FMIA: What are the most valuable lessons you take from working with Doug Pederson?
DeFilippo: “Two things I’m going to give you. Number one, trust in his assistant coaches. He trusted [offensive coordinator] Frank Reich to pull the whole thing together. He and Frank both trusted all the offensive assistants to have our own areas and be the master of that area. So the trust on that coaching staff was earned—if Doug put you in charge of red-area plays, he trusted you to be the best in the league at knowing the best things to do in that area.
Number two: Coach is gonna do it his way. His way is pedal to the medal. He wants to score on every play. He gets upset sometimes because we don’t score on every play, in a good way. He’s going to stay on the attack when there’s that point in the game where you can either try to put an opponent away or just kind of ride it out.
He’ll always take the shot to put the opponent away. And the players followed. In all we did, we locked arm and arm, here we are, and prepared the same no matter who we played. Our term for that year was, ‘faceless opponent.’ And each week we treated our opponent like it was a faceless person.
“I should also say in my two years in Philadelphia, I never heard Mr. Lurie [owner Jeffrey Lurie] say no to anything we needed. I mean, Nick Foles was having some issues in training camp last year and we bought this special machine to help him in his rehab that cost a lost of money. We also had an emphasis in the draft and free agency on bringing in quality people.
There’s gonna be a time in the NFL season when you’ll have ups and downs—a player mad at a coach, a coach mad at a player, an argument on the field. If you have good character people and great locker room character, I think you get over those things. Carson Wentz goes down in December, and as awful as we felt for him, everybody’s ready to step in and do a little more—because we knew we all had to.”
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Intelligent Football
One smart game down for Andrew Luck, 19 to go. (Or more, if the Colts make the playoffs and Luck stays upright.) In his quarter played Thursday night at Seattle, Luck and his quarterback-protecting coach, Frank Reich, made sure Luck stayed clean by throwing quickly compared to his career average.
Luck took 2.45 seconds to throw, on average, for his 11 throws Thursday night.
Per Pro Football Focus metrics, how that 2.45-second average in Seattle compared to the first five seasons of his career:
2012: 2.86 seconds
2013: 2.80 seconds
2014: 2.83 seconds
2015: 2.88 seconds
2016: 2.88 seconds
Average: 2.85 seconds
It’s ridiculously early, but the Colts are off to a good start ensuring Luck doesn’t take the kind of beating he took in the first five years of his career.
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1. I think if you’ve read this column over the years, you know I think Chicago GM Ryan Pace is good at his job, overall. There are times when GMs have to do the right thing for their teams, and the right thing for the Bears is to sign the guy Pace drafted to be the centerpiece of the defense, linebacker Roquan Smith.
This is day 29 of a holdout over something exceedingly minor in the grand scheme of things. It’s got to end. Principle is one thing. We’re talking about the reality of getting the best players ready to play in an uber-competitive division. Drop the fight. Get Smith in camp, and get him ready to chase Aaron Rodgers four weeks from last night at Lambeau.
2. I think I’ve got two recommendations for fantasy football coverage:
• If you’re not a July or August student of the trends and who’s hot and who’s not and who’s going to emerge by Week 3 in a prominent role, you should do one of two things. One: Kidnap Matthew Berry and force him to live with you for the next six weeks. Two: Invest a few bucks in a product that will do everything for you, the Rotoworld Premium Draft Guide. It’s good and ridiculously thorough. (And I was just kidding about kidnapping my friend Matthew Berry—though he would be highly entertaining company.)
• In the interest of good, analytical football coverage mixed with fantasy know-how, check out The 2018 TFS Fantasy Football Draft Guide, by K.C. Joyner. I’ve always loved Joyner’s clarity of thought, and how he makes football analytics so fan-accessible. Check out this from this year’s guide:
“The Jaguars went into last season with the mindset that they didn’t want Blake Bortles throwing any more passes than was absolutely necessary. They obviously changed their minds, as Bortles posted green ratings (upper third in the league among quarterbacks) in multiple attempts categories, the most notable of which was the vertical depth level—passes thrown 11 yards or further downfield. He cut his Bad Decision Rate (mental errors leading to turnover chances) nearly in half from 2016 to 2017, a factor that likely affected the Jaguars’ willingness to let him throw more downfield passes.”
Good stuff. Great stat too on what Tom Brady loses with Brandin Cooks being traded. Cooks accounted for 43 percent of Brady’s deep vertical throws in New England last year, so keep that in mind when deciding how high to draft Brady.
3. I think you did not need any volume on the video to see how ticked off Cam Newton was in his exchange with Kelvin Benjamin on Thursday night. Benjamin, traded from Carolina to Buffalo last season, trashed Newton to Tim Graham of The Athletic,and Newton sought him out before their preseason game, and clearly Benjamin wanted nothing to do with Newton. That ticked off Newton, whose body language said, “You’re dead to me, Benjamin.” Pretty amazing scene.
4. I think Cleveland Browns fans who watched “Hard Knocks” or have been at a camp practice must love Jarvis Landry. Man, this guy wants it. In a meeting in the Browns’ receivers room, Landry goes off on his peers who he thinks are taking the easy way out of practice. “If your hamstring ain’t fallin’ off the bone, if your leg ain’t broke, you should be practicing! Straight up. It’s weakness.
It’s contagious as f—! … It’s over with here, bro! If you’re not hurt, you gotta f—ing practice! That ain’t happenin’ here! That don’t exist! … It’s contagious. It’s contagious.” The Browns have had a lot of guys who’ve made a lot of money and lost a lot of games over the years, and now they’ve got at least one very rich player who’s going to hold his mates accountable.
5. I think I have to admit I really hope Trevor Siemian has a good 13-year career as an NFL backup and sometimes-starter. Such a good and selfless person, sort of like a fellow 250th overall pick in his own draft class, Ryan Fitzpatrick. Ran into Siemian the other day in Minnesota, and he’s so happy to be with a good team, good organization and good starting quarterback, Kirk Cousins.
6. I think this was some interesting advice among former and current peers, from vice president of officiating-turned-FOX rules analyst Dean Blandino to Gene Steratore, the new CBS rules analyst for football and college basketball: “I told Gene: The speed at which things happen, then going on the air, is very fast. And then you will not have time to share everything you want to explain. In the TV world, you may only have 10 seconds to explain something that might be complicated and take far longer. Being concise is a big challenge.” Blandino nailed that.
