FOXBORO, Mass. — It’s safe to say Jimmy Garoppolo has been a little off in the last week of New England Patriots training camp.
After beginning training camp 100 of 135 with three interceptions, he’s just 58 of 104 with three picks in his last five practices. Maybe camp monotony has gotten to him, maybe Bill Belichick is turning up the heat and putting pressure on the young quarterback, maybe he’s taking risks now he wouldn’t take in games or maybe he’s just overthinking, but his chance to turn it around comes Thursday in the Patriots’ first preseason game against the New Orleans Saints.
“There’s always room for improvement as a quarterback, especially as a young quarterback,” Garoppolo said. “I’m only going into my third year, so there’s always room for improvement, little things here and there that you just pick up on, and hopefully they’ll correct the next day. …
“We’re moving in the right direction. I’ll say that.”
Belichick said Tuesday that he would prefer quarterbacks take more risks in practice than games.
“That’s when a quarterback can really develop confidence in a player; throwing it into a tight spot or having the guy make a tough catch,” Belichick said. “Can he get it into a small window? You don’t want the first time that happens to be in a game and then find out and have him say, ‘Well I shouldn’t have thrown that.’ If that’s going to happen, let’s have it happen in practice if we’re going to take that kind of risk.
“At the same time, we don’t want to go out there and throw 12 interceptions every practice either, that’s not the idea. But as far as taking a risk, doing something in practice that you wouldn’t do in the game, if there’s a reason for doing it, which I’d say there’s a lot of reasons for doing that, and we talk about those, then I’d say there’s definitely a place for that. It’s a way for, in the passing game particularly, to have a better understanding of what to do, and sometimes what not to do; what you can do, where the risk is worth it and where it isn’t. Those are all good teaching situations.
“Again, bad plays are bad plays. There’s a difference between a bad play and taking a chance in practice in preparation for a similar situation coming up in the game. Would you take that risk, again, how big of a risk is it? And so forth. Those are great points that come up in practice that we teach from and the quarterbacks need to understand that it is OK to do that in practice, provided it’s done in the right situations and the right circumstances. It’s OK to do that as long as we learn from it and then don’t make it cause a mistake in the game.”
Garoppolo uses practice to build confidence in his targets.
“Part of that is gauging your receivers, your running backs, tight end, whatever it may be and trust them,” Garoppolo said. “Sometimes you want to try something new, something a guy’s never done before. It’s good to try at practice. Obviously you’d rather try at practice than a game and have a bad result. That’s what practice is for. You make mistakes here so you don’t make them in a game.”
Garoppolo must learn from his mistakes and avoid them while he’s the Patriots’ starting quarterback during the first four weeks of the season as Tom Brady serves his four-game suspension.
Thumbnail photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images
