POCKET FULL OF DYNAMITE
Mighty Pats don’t fumble often, but dealing Garoppolo might hurt later,
The New England Patriots are ruthless. They trade guys the moment before those players crest the hill and start headed down, or become a dollar too expensive, goes the story. Deion Branch. Mike Vrabel and Matt Cassel. Richard Seymour. Randy Moss. Logan Mankins. Chandler Jones. They win those trades. They carry on. They overcome.
Enter Jimmy Garoppolo. It was the hopeless San Francisco 49ers who agreed to trade a secondround pick for the young QB this year after entering the season with . . . dear god, Brian Hoyer and C.J. Beathard, who combined to win one of San Francisco’s first 11 games. That win came against the New York Giants the week after ESPN quoted an anonymous Giants player saying the team had given up on their coach. Story checks out, boss.
And now Jimmy Garoppolo is the handsome new boy at school that everybody loves. Four straight wins! Four! He is a Great Quarterback. He is a Natural Leader. 49ers players are acting like Beyoncé showed up and can run a pro-style offence. Veteran left tackle Joe Staley told nfl.com’s Mike Silver, “I was telling our offensive line coach, I wish it was Week 6. I can’t wait — next year’s gonna be pretty special. Now the pressure’s on the rest of us: We can’t (screw) it up!” Running back Carlos Hyde told reporters, “Minus our record, we’re a really good football team. Next year we’re going to win the Super Bowl.”
Handsome new boys with talent and charisma: making people lose their minds since forever. The 49ers are 26th in total defence, or 30th by the advanced stat DVOA that Football Outsiders uses. But they have a QB, and that allows for anything. In those four games Jimmy has thrown for 1,230 yards and four touchdowns to three interceptions; in Week 16 he played Jacksonville’s top-ranked defence and the 49ers scored 44 points. (Caveats: one interception return TD, one 26-yard touchdown drive after a Blake Bortles interception, one 18-yard touchdown drive after another one.)
Jimmy plus new coach Kyle Shanahan — the former Falcons offensive co-ordinator who forgot to run the ball in that Super Bowl, if you recall — is magic. It’s kind of perfect, really: in a year where star after star got hurt, a star is born too late to really matter this year.
So did New England screw up? They were going to have to pay Garoppolo a lot of money to stay next year and instead they punted, because you can’t cut Tom Brady, not yet. And this year it’s probably fine: they just need to beat the Jets to get home-field advantage in the playoffs. Who is going to stop them? Pittsburgh, with Antonio Brown racing to come back from that calf injury? Jacksonville? Kansas City? Whichever two of Baltimore/Tennessee/the Chargers/Buffalo make the playoffs? Eh.
Similarly, Philadelphia lost Carson Wentz, and Green Bay lost Aaron Rodgers. New England has things go wrong for them, like everybody else. They have experienced injury problems, because they are a football team. And still, everything is coming up Patriots.
But now, if you hate New England, you have the small flickering hope that one day, when they have to replace Brady, Garoppolo — charismatic sidearming drive-leading draft-pick-ruining quarterback of the future — will be 3,000 miles away.
Which means one of two things will happen: one, Brady will stay Brady until he’s 45, giving the Patriots time to draft and develop a successor; or two, Garoppolo will be revealed to be less than his magical debut tour. Or, the least likely scenario: A San Francisco-New England Super Bowl next year, and the student ruthlessly becomes the master. We live in hope.
Last week this space went 5-11. We’re finishing the year the way the 49ers started. As always, all lines could change.