The luckiest break that Jimmie G got was when he was selected by the Patriots. While he might have a an NFL quick release, and decent accuracy and good decision making for a college QB, Garapalo was at least 2 years away from running an NFL offense, and probably 3 years away from running the Pats offense at peak efficiency .
Now he's a year closer, but it will still be better for him to spend another 2 years under Brady. Over the next 2 years he's going to get a chance to play the bulk of 8i preseason games as well as 2 or 3 regular season games. 201u7 will be the critical year for the Pats when they will have to move on from Tom Brady, or use Garapolo as a draft chip.
Personally I think he has easily been the best back up of the BB era. He's shown to be the most athletic, the most accurate and the best release of any our current group, even if he was actually the least prepared to play the NFL game, let alone the Pats offense coming in. I'm pretty confident that we will see enough to get us all pretty excited this pre-season. Although I still feel confident that he is a least another year away before he's ready to become an adequate NFL QB
If he was coming out this year, he's easily be the #3 ranked QB coming out and possibly a first round pick comparatively. I was among those who weren't happy with the pick last year. I thought it was at least a year too soon, but given the dearth of QB talent due to come out in the next few years, it was probably unlikely that the Pats were going to get a better talent where they were going to pick
Brady is going to be 40 at the start of the 2017 season. The way he keeps himself in shape, we have no real reason to believe that he won't one of the top 5 QB's in the league going into that season. But all you can ask of your personnel department to give you options, and come 2017 at least the Pats will have some. It will be interesting to see what they might do.
My guess is that if they think that Garapolo can be 90% as effective as Brady and they can get a big haul of draft picks/players for him, I'd bet they pull the trigger and go a year too early rather than a year too late. Brady could be a solid asset to one of the new LA teams for 2-3 years, and because of it garner some value in a trade
BOTTOM LINE: We will have some fun with some Garapolo threads over the next couple of years, but the fact of the matter is that Jimmie Garapolo (baring injury), will have little or no effect on the success or failure of the New England Patriots until the start of the 2017 season.
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