Jimmy Garoppolo might have been relegated to carrying a clipboard during most of his three-and-a-half seasons with the New England Patriots, but he said he always believed he could be better than Tom Brady.
But that’s nothing new for him. Garoppolo said he has always believed in himself – regardless of the competition.
“Even when I was a little kid, my brothers, whenever we would play, I would literally always think I was going to win. I wouldn’t, but I would always think that,” Garoppolo said in a profile posted Monday on Bleacher Report.
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Garoppolo said he had that same mindset when the Patriots drafted him 2014, and Brady had long-since been established as one of the top quarterbacks in NFL history.
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“It’s like when I go to New England,” Garoppolo said. “When I first got there, I thought in my head, ‘I’m better than this dude.’ ”
The writer of the article, Joon Lee, reveals he asked three follow-up questions on the subject of thinking he was better than Brady. Garoppolo responded:
San Francisco 49ers
--“It was always a quiet confidence. I would never speak that.”
--“Yeah, you believe in yourself. That’s the best way to put it.”
On his third try, Joon asked Garoppolo if he would go up to Brady and tell him, “I’m better than you.”
Said Garoppolo, “I’m not stupid. You have to pick your battles, but I had belief in myself that I could do certain things, and it’s always worked out pretty well. It will always be in me, that drive that comes from my dad telling me that someone is always working harder, that I’m always in last place and I need to catch up to someone else.”
Garoppolo, whom the 49ers acquired last season in a trade with the Patriots, described his relationship with Brady as competitive and supportive. According to the article, Brady would call Garoppolo weekly during the offseason to ask how he was working to become a better player.
“I was going to watch and literally absorb everything I could from him without being an annoyance,” Garoppolo said. “I didn’t want to ask a ton of questions. I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. You have to play the politics a little bit.”
Garoppolo added, “The competitiveness between the two of us was very similar. If I’m playing my best friend in one-on-one basketball, if we are both into it, by the end, we are going to hate each other,” Jimmy says. “That’s how it is. All the good competitors have that. We got along, but there were always times where we wanted to kill each other. It was a healthy, competitive relationship.”