On Oct. 30, 2017, news broke that the 49ers were acquiring Jimmy Garoppolo from the Patriots.
The next day, Garoppolo boarded a flight for the Bay Area.
But before the quarterback arrived at the airport, he nearly was involved in a serious car accident.
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Joon Lee of Bleacher Report posted a feature story on Garoppolo on Monday morning. The opening sentence:
"Ten hours after Bill Belichick called to tell him he’d been traded to the Niners, Jimmy Garoppolo almost died."
Shortly thereafter, Lee writes that Garoppolo:
"Was rushing to the airport to catch the Niners’ private plane to the Bay. He was running on not enough sleep, a suitcase full of unfolded clothes and his iPhone blowing up in the backseat of a limousine merging onto I-95.That’s when the unexpected nightmare began. Another car exited the highway, skidded off the side of the ramp, turned straight toward Jimmy’s door—straight toward the man who is now the third-highest-paid player in the National Football League.
San Francisco 49ers
Jimmy stared at the headlights outside his window. For a young man whose superpower is self-confidence, whose only insecurity is the temporary absence of perfection, Jimmy Garoppolo, once more, didn’t know what could possibly happen next.
As the swerving car crossed the median of the Massachusetts interstate and kept barreling toward him on the morning after the trade, Jimmy’s limo driver bailed into a ditch. “Could you imagine that story,” the driver said to Jimmy, “if we got hit leaving here?”
“Holy sh*t, what just happened?” Jimmy asked.
Fortunately for everybody involved, nobody was hurt.
And to answer the limo's driver question -- no, we could not imagine that story...