Jimmy Garoppolo: Making sense of 49ers quarterback’s comments on Tom Brady

Bleacher Report’s recent interview with Jimmy Garoppolo included some interesting comments from the 49ers quarterback on his former New England Patriots teammate, Tom Brady. Let’s break down what they mean.

“Yeah, you believe in yourself,” now-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo told Bleacher Report’s Joon Lee when asked if he thought he was better than New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. “That’s the best way to put it.”

Just before, Garoppolo made a prompted statement that forced a few raised eyebrows.

“It’s like when I go to New England, when I first got there, I thought in my head, ‘I’m better than this dude.’”

There was plenty of other tidbits that were of interest, including one admission from Jimmy G that there were “always times where we wanted to kill each other.”

But the thought Garoppolo felt he was better than Brady, a surefire Hall of Famer and arguably the best quarterback to play the game, was going to create some sour notes. Particularly among those who felt Garoppolo, a quarterback with a mere seven starts under his belt, was better than Brady.

OK, time to interpret things.

First, Lee pushed Garoppolo more than once on the subject. Three times, to be precise. Yet Garoppolo’s first answer was the clearest. By far:

"I’ve always had that mindset. I knew that [Brady] was better than me in my first day in the NFL. Naturally, you’re the rookie and he’s the veteran, but you have to have that mindset, that you want to be the starter."

What Lee was trying to get at, and moderately succeeded in doing so, was to get Garoppolo to admit to thinking he was better than Brady. Yet even if Garoppolo came out clearly and said, “I am, at this point in my career, a better quarterback than Brady,” it wouldn’t have been that bad a thing.

Not at all.

Sports are all about competition. It doesn’t matter if it’s a team sport or individual. It doesn’t matter if you’re competing with others or against yourself. Competition is the spark that drives an athlete. And those at the highest levels, such as the NFL, won’t last a month in the league off talent alone.

They need to be better than the other guy.

Fox Sports’ Undisputed’s Shannon Sharpe elaborated on what this means:

For those who haven’t played organized sports at a high level, it might be a difficult concept to understand. There’s nothing wrong about being somewhat ignorant about it — after all, most of us spend years watching these players reach such accolades and little more — but the work that goes into those performances is something few of us ever see.

I recall a commentator’s statement during the Stanley Cup playoffs a couple of years ago. He noted every NHL team in the playoffs wants to win the cup, no question there. But the champions are determined by which players and teams are willing to do the most to win.

That’s the key difference.

Garoppolo is dipping into his confidence. Nothing more, nothing less. If Jimmy G were to say he felt less a quarterback than Brady, there would be no chance to build as impressive a resume as his predecessor in New England.

If anything, Garoppolo is setting his goals in the way they should be set. He’s striving for greatness on a stage that commands such.

And if you want an epitaph on the comments from New England media, Ryan Hannable of Boston’s WEEI, it’s this:

"It’s quite apparent now why Brady could have been threatened by Garoppolo, as not only could he do special things on the field, he had the right mindset off it."

Next: 5 reasons why Jimmy Garoppolo gets even better in 2018

Seems as if even those covering the Patriots understand where Garoppolo was coming from.

You should too, if you don’t already.