Las Vegas Raiders general manager Dave Ziegler is responsible for ushering in this new era of the team after making the switch at quarterback.
Out went Derek Carr and in came Jimmy Garoppolo whom the team committed three years to. Garoppolo is coming off another injury-riddled season but is expected to take the Raiders back to the postseason under head coach Josh McDaniels.
There’s some skepticism floating around the Las Vegas fanbase about Garoppolo, but Ziegler did his best to assure that Garoppolo is the man for the job via Tashan Reed of The Athletic:
We’re confident. We’ve been around Jimmy since he came in the NFL, so we were with him through a few of those developmental, nurturing years where you really get to learn who people are as football players, as people, from a talent standpoint. And he was successful with us in the time that he got to get on the field. Obviously, there wasn’t an extensive time because Tom (Brady) was there. And then you see him go to San Francisco and, again, there’s a high level of success that he has there, too, when he’s out on the field in a completely different system. He showed the ability to adapt to that system, adapt to a new culture, adapt to a new set of teammates and you saw a lot of the same things that we saw in New England, which was players gravitating towards him. The locker room embraces him. We saw him do that in a completely new setting. He won a few of the football games he went out for us when he started those few games when Tom wasn’t with us at that time. He won those games, and he goes to San Francisco and wins a bunch more games.
“So, again, I go back to the leadership and the proven winning aspect. I think those are the things that made Jimmy attractive to us. Knowing the history of it and seeing what we thought we saw in his younger years and then to see it manifest and prove itself out in San Francisco made us feel that we’re going to get someone that’s going to provide a lot of leadership and help us win football games.
Garoppolo’s on-field success is often scrutinized because of the coaches and systems he’s played in, but it’s hard to deny the resume he’s built up to this point in his career. With a true chance to elevate a franchise on his own, it’ll be interesting to see how he does once the 2023 season arrives.
