Tom Brady has contacted San Franciscio 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to wish him well for Super Bowl LIV in Miami on Sunday.
Garoppolo was looked upon as Brady’s heir apparent when the two were team-mates at New England Patriots. However, Brady’s seemingly-everlasting evergreen form saw Garoppolo traded to the 49ers in 2017.
Now he’s on the verge of blazing his own trail for Brady’s boyhood favorites. On Sunday he will bid to win a record-sharing sixth Super Bowl for San Francisco when they take on the Kansas City Chiefs.
Six-time Super Bowl champion Brady has been preoccupied year after year with pre-Bowl preparations in the lead-up to the big game. Not this time.
His Patriots were stunningly eliminated from the Bowl race by the Tennessee Titans in Wild Card Week and he’s used the break to give Garoppolo some simple encouragement.
“He shot me a text, just, ‘Good luck’, and everything like that,” Garoppolo disclosed. “Just go handle business. It wasn’t too complicated or anything; just ‘Go win’.”
Garoppolo’s a two-time Super Bowl champion himself
Garoppolo is a two-time Super Bowl winner himself; this as Brady’s deputy, a role he occupied for three years.
He believes his time spent working with arguably the greatest NFL quarterback of all time has served him well now that the spotlight is firmly on him.
“He was awesome in everything he did,” Garoppolo said.
“I tried not to be too much of a pest and ask too many questions, but just watching him from afar; how he went about his business; how he handled off-the-field things, on the field, whatever it was, he always did it the right way. So he set me a good example when I was young.”
Garoppolo witnessed Brady engineer fourth-quarter comebacks against both the Seattle Seahawks and Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowls. He still marvells at how cool he can stay on the biggest stages.
“I think just how calm he was,” Garoppolo added when listing what he learned from Brady.
“Everyone says you’ve got to treat it (the Super Bowl) like just another game. That’s just the way he actually did it.
“I was up close and personal”
“I was up close and personal, picking up everything I could, seeing how he went about his business.”
The Niners quarterback is not the only contestant to have been receiving advice from someone close to him ahead of the Super Bowl.
Rookie defensive end Nick Bosa’s brother, Joey, plays for the Los Angeles Chargers. He has faced Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes twice this season.
The younger Bosa therefore made sure he got some tips from big brother about how to slow down one of the game’s most unique signal callers.
“He definitely told me you can’t rush as a single rusher,” Nick Bosa revealed.
“You have to rush as a unit, stay in your lanes and not let him get out of the pocket.”
Right now, New Jersey’s dozen and a half sportsbooks unanimously favour Mohomes (-110) to win the Super Bowl MVP ahead of Garoppolo (+250), Rahhem Mostert (+850) and Tyreek Hill (+1700).
They also favour the Chiefs to triumph in the game, the money-line odds of Fan Duel, for instance, being -128 for the Chiefs and +112 for the 49ers.