Cleveland Browns: Don’t believe the Jimmy Garoppolo hype

Here is where it all gets shaky. How can one project future performance of a player with 63 NFL passes? At this point, Garoppolo supporters begin comparing him to potential draft picks. With a quick sleight of hand the conditions of the test are changed.

Instead of comparing Garoppolo to his peers i.e. Blake Bortles, Teddy Bridgewater, Johnny Manziel or Derek Carr (all taken before Garoppolo in the same draft), Garoppolo is compared to draft prospects like North Carolina’s Mitch Trubisky, Clemon’s Deshaun Watson and Notre Dame’s DeShone Kizer.

When compared to his peers, the NFL found Jimmy Garoppolo lacking with almost every team passing on him twice. But when compared to incoming rookies, suddenly Garoppolo is the best prospect available. The difference? Two years of backing up Tom Brady with the New England Patriots.

Garoppolo’s projected value as an NFL starter always comes back to his time backing up Tom Brady in New England. But how much is backing up Tom Brady worth? The assumption is that whatever weakness Garoppolo may have had coming into the league would have been resolved in the two years with the Patriots.

He would also have learned to be a leader, a pro quarterback and the second coming of Tom Brady (sarcasm intended) whom the Patriots would keep except they already have Tom Brady and cannot afford to keep two top-flight quarterbacks.

Jason Fitzgerald, contributor at sportingnews.com, recently wrote an article outlining each team’s salary cap situation. He concludes that the Patriots have $67 million in cap space which puts them in a great position cap-wise. When discussing the Patriots he states:

"Something doesn’t seem fair when the Super Bowl champions will have this much cap space in 2017, but the Patriots are the most well-managed team in the league, and it shows both on and off the field."

It sounds like the Patriots have the cap space to retain Garoppolo should they decide to. But it does not seem like the Patriots want to keep him despite Tom Brady’s age. Right now, Brady looks like he could play forever. And so did Peyton Manning, until Manning no longer looked like he could play forever.

If the Patriots truly believed in Garoppolo, they have the money and incentive to keep him around for when Brady hits in the inevitable cliff. They may keep him, but right now it sounds like the Patriots want to trade Garoppolo. Eventually, someone is going to ask why.

The why may be answered not in what Jimmy Garoppolo does well, but in what he does not do well. People in support of the Browns trading for Garoppolo like to highlight what he does well. In fairness, he does do several things well. He adequately reads a defense, he changes the play at the line of scrimmage and he ran the same offense as Brady. Focusing on the positives to the neglect of the negatives paints a picture of Garoppolo that any team would fall in love with.

Never fall in love.