The offseason was a bit of a wild ride for Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. After seemingly agreeing to a three-year deal with the Raiders in free agency, that contract was almost destroyed due to Garoppolo failing to pass a physical.
This was due to the foot injury that ended Garoppolo’s season last year with the San Francisco 49ers which hadn’t completely healed as expected. The two sides re-worked the deal, and Garoppolo would undergo one more surgery, keeping him out of offseason workouts, but he was able to pass the physical before the start of training camp and is now working to get up to speed with his new team.
While it was an unfortunate situation, Garoppolo is happy with the outcome overall, telling Michael Silver of the San Francisco Chronicle that he’s happy he got the surgery when he did and is completely healthy now:
“Honestly it was just an unlucky situation,” Garoppolo said. “The one toe (the second toe on his left foot) just wouldn’t heal. It was a deep crack, one of those. And the other two bones did heal. It was a weird situation, but I think we made the best of it. They wanted me to get surgery. I’m glad I did now, looking back on it.”
In order to make the deal work, Garoppolo converted his signing bonus into a non-guaranteed base salary, meaning the Raiders could have released him outright had he been unable to take the field when the season began. His introductory press conference was even delayed by a day to get the deal worked out.
But as Garoppolo said, it worked out for the best as he is now completely healthy and quickly getting himself integrated with his new surroundings and teammates. While there has been some rust as he’s returned, as is to be expected, he has also garnered a lot of praise from his teammates as well and has even been at the center of some normal training camp arguments between the offense and defense.
This Raiders offense has all the makings of a top unit in the league, but it will only go as far as Garoppolo takes them as the leader on that side of the ball. He has proven that he can thrive with the right weapons around him and this team has those pieces. It will simply be on him to take them to the next level, and now that he’s healthy, Garoppolo plans on doing just that.
