As fans in Dallas watched a poignant passing of the torch this week, it was another reminder that no player in the NFL is irreplaceable.
So it was interesting that when Patriots coach Bill Belichick talked to reporters Friday morning — when he is generally his most open and insightful — he veered from a discussion of how great Tom Brady was seamlessly into how great Jimmy Garoppolo might be.
Belichick clearly wasn’t trying to suggest anything about the future of the position, but it illustrates how much faith they developed in Garoppolo this year while Brady was suspended, and the work their backup has put in. Again, the discussion was about Brady and his durability and how that impacts their ability to practice well, but it was hard to miss the subtext.
“If you’re missing one receiver then maybe you get the timing with the other 10 players, . . . If you’re missing the quarterback, you could still get it and certainly we have a good quarterback in Jimmy and Jimmy could go out there and run everything that Tom can run,” Belichick said, via Phill Perry of CSNNE.com. “We’ve seen that. I’m not saying that he’s not capable or qualified to do it. He is. And he does a great job of it. And when we put Jimmy in there, it’s really seamless. You can’t, unless you were actually looking at the position, if you could just block out that position and say which guy was in there at quarterback, I don’t know if you would know a lot of times.
“But for the quarterback to have that kind of consistency with the snap count, the cadence, the way that his voice or mannerisms or reminders in the huddle — little things like that — the whole timing at the line of scrimmage, and running the plays in practice . . . That is a huge carryover to the games. Again, Tom’s consistency to do that, not only for himself but for the rest of the team, and the ability for the rest of the team to be able to count on that is very important.”
It would be a mistake to put too much weight on the comments from the standpoint of any future beyond Brady in New England. But it is interesting to hear Belichick mention unprompted that Garoppolo was trustworthy enough to replicate the daily standard set by the future Hall of Famer.
