NFL

[Frank Pembleton]

Malo razonode:
Nine teams, a hundred of teammates, and a lifetime stories : Ryan Fitzpatrick

A rare morning storm has just rolled over Ryan Fitzpatrick’s home in Gilbert, Ariz., and the 38-year-old quarterback is on the backyard patio prepping for breakfast. The first meal of the day looks a little different in the Fitzpatrick house. There’s almost enough food on the counter to feed an NFL offensive line: two packages of bacon, a few rolls of Jimmy Dean ground sausage, giant mixing bowls of pancake batter, whipped-up eggs and a small vat of Log Cabin syrup.

The four youngest of his seven kids have come hopping down the stairs, and the rest aren’t far behind. As Fitzpatrick tears open the first slab of bacon, he clicks on the 48-inch, restaurant-quality griddle built into the counter. “This thing,” he says. “is my baby.”

His backyard is a kid’s paradise. There’s a resort-style pool and a built-in trampoline, and a sports court in the yard next door, where his brother Shaun lives with his five children. The setup isn’t too shabby for adults, either. Along with his griddle, Fitzpatrick has not one but two Green Egg smokers and there’s a beautiful, elevated fire pit tucked next to the pool deck.

This version of the home was completed in 2018 — after an extended three-year renovation — but he and wife Liza originally bought the place in 2008. On the eve of training camp the previous summer, Fitzpatrick was traded from the then-St. Louis Rams to the Cincinnati Bengals and the couple promptly decided it needed a permanent home base should Ryan ever have to change teams so suddenly again.

More than a decade later, Fitzpatrick has added seven more NFL stops to his resumé, and the house in his hometown of Gilbert has served as a familiar offseason retreat.

Over time, the Fitzpatricks have developed a system for each new move. They’ll start by studying the area to identify the best public schools, and use that initial search to build a list of seven to 10 houses. On his own, Fitzpatrick flies out and makes the final decision. Not long after, Liza will follow with all the kids in tow.

The latest version of that process happened this spring, after Fitzpatrick signed a one-year, $10 million deal with the Washington Football Team, sparking a move to Virginia after having spent the two previous seasons in sun-splashed Florida with the Dolphins.

Calling the 17-year veteran a “journeyman” feels woefully incomplete. He’s been the player on the fringe, the backup, the Harvard guy, the beard guy, the guy who keeps the seat warm for a top-5 pick, and the guy who eventually usurps that same highly drafted quarterback. But the setup in Washington is unlike anything Fitzpatrick has faced in his career. This isn’t a team in the midst of a teardown or a franchise with a first-round QB waiting in the wings. Washington was one of two teams to pursue Fitzpatrick as a starter this offseason, and did so because it believes he is the best option to help a playoff team from 2020 take another step forward.

“This is the best situation I’ve ever been in,” says Fitzpatrick. “If you think about my career, this is only the third time that I’ve signed somewhere to be a starter. You just walk with a little bit more ownership of what’s going on.”

The office in Fitzpatrick’s Arizona home serves as a living timeline of his career. Helmets from every stop line the wood shelves, with one exception: He’s missing one from his time in Cincinnati, when he was too cheap to fork over the $200 it cost to take one home. Propped against a wall sits a framed photo of a clean-shaven Fitzpatrick holding his first minicamp check from his rookie year in St. Louis. As a seventh-round pick, he earned all of $273.63. “It’s a copy of it,” he says. “Because I sure as hell cashed that thing. I thought it might be my last check ever too.”

Interspersed with the helmets sit a collection of game balls, celebrating the births of all seven of his children and various milestones. “This one is for my first touchdown pass ever, to Torry Holt,” Fitzpatrick says. “He signed it, ‘Best wishes, Torry Holt.’ I don’t even think he knew I was a player at that point.”

Fitzpatrick’s NFL journey is so winding that he has to glance back at the helmets for reference multiple times as he details it all. Nine teams, hundreds of teammates and a lifetime of stories, none more special than some of his memories with the Bills. “We were the island of misfit toys,” he says. “Most of us had no business being on an NFL roster, but we made it work.”

Everywhere Fitzpatrick goes, tales of his legendary mensch status follow. Brandon Marshall caught a single-season career-high 14 touchdown passes from Fitzpatrick in 2015 and compares the quarterback’s emotional intelligence to the physical skills other players may have. Some quarterbacks are tall, fast, or have outlandish arm strength. Fitzpatrick’s superpower is that he can carry a genuine conversation with anyone in the building.

“Fitz does a great job of meeting people where they’re at,” Marshall said. “We know his pedigree. Harvard grad, super smart. So the dude can sit at the table with owners and executives in a boardroom and go head-to-head with them. And then he also can come down to the locker room and connect with the guy from the inner city, from urban America, to the guys from the country. He’s relatable. He understands everyone’s perspective. That’s really the thing that makes him special.”

Fitzpatrick’s large family has made him nimble when it comes to learning different personalities, but he says that like parenting, there’s no established set of guidelines for how to interact with teammates.

“The best leaders I’ve been around, they don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Today, I’m gonna pour into DBs,’” former Bills and current Falcons tight end Lee Smith said. “That’s fake bullshit. If you wake up in the morning and you just be Ryan Fitzpatrick, people are just gonna gravitate towards you.”

The most important ingredient in fostering a connection with new teammates, Fitzpatrick maintains, is time. Amid all the talk about NFL players skipping offseason workouts this year, Fitzpatrick made it clear to Washington’s coaching staff and his teammates that he’d be present in Virginia.

“Being on a new team every year, it’s not the system and learning it,” Fitzpatrick said. “That stuff is gonna take care of itself. Meeting the guys and having this human connection with these guys is such an important aspect of playing QB and being part of a team. A lot of that is time. You have to put the time in. You have to have conversations. You have to ask questions. There are no shortcuts to building relationships.”

In Buffalo, that meant Friday afternoon trips to Uncle Joe’s Diner, down the road from the Bills’ facility, with the offensive line. With the Jets, he’d share rides with Marshall or Eric Decker to and from games. Mike Evans remembers countless discussions with his quarterback about politics, current events, every topic imaginable.

“I don’t know where he finds the capacity to build individual relationships with these guys,” Marshall said. “The dude is a next-level leader.”

Beyond his knack for finding common ground, Fitzpatrick’s greatest gift is a total lack of insecurity. He’s never inclined to tear down those around him, even as the smartest guy in the room. “He’s very good at picking how he says things and choosing his words,” former Bucs offensive coordinator Todd Monken said. “To me, that’s what makes him what he is. He’s fun, he can joke with the guys. But his jokes are not condescending. His jokes don’t revolve around putting somebody down. His personality lifts people up.”

In the ego-driven world of pro football, Fitzpatrick is the rare player who’s capable of being truly selfless. During the 2018 season, Fitzpatrick ceded his backup reps in the two-minute drill to third-stringer Ryan Griffin – invaluable experience for a young quarterback who otherwise never could’ve honed that area of his game. “Certain guys that you’re around will purposely go out of their way to take reps so that the younger guys can’t get me, and it’s just this dog-eat-dog world,” Griffin said. “‘Hey, if I take these reps and this young guy can’t get better, then he’s not going to take my job.’ But Fitz understands he got to the point he is because he was a later pick and he ended up getting reps and opportunities.

“I think he should go down — and will go down — as the most loved guy to play this game by his teammates.”


“The dude is a next-level leader,” Brandon Marshall, who played with Fitzpatrick on the Jets, says of the QB. (Tom Pennington / Getty Images)
As part of their home renovation, the Fitzpatricks installed a wraparound booth in the kitchen to serve as a place for the kids to congregate each morning. On this particular Wednesday, his four daughters are rewatching a video of 8-year-old Maizy reading a story she wrote last year.

The list of extracurricular activities among the Fitzpatrick kids runs the gamut: every sport under the sun, acting classes, trumpet, singing lessons. And Fitzpatrick does his best to witness it all, which requires a strict commitment to the boundaries between his football life and his life at home. “I try to not let anything that happens with football affect the personal,” he said. “I leave the building, I leave my notebook, come home, and be dad.”

He’s usually been able to maintain that separation, with one glaring exception: the 2016 season, his second with the Jets. “I just had to make a very conscious effort to hide what I was feeling,” he said. “About work, about the season. I just literally hated football that year.”

A year earlier, the Jets had caught lightning in a bottle. The team had traded for Fitzpatrick in March 2015, reuniting him with Jets coordinator and former Bills head coach Chan Gailey. Any excitement about the reunion came with a slight sense of foreboding for the status of presumptive starting quarterback Geno Smith, who was entering his third season with the team. “It made me nervous for the guy who was supposed to be the starter,” Gailey said. “I knew how good Fitz was, and I knew it was going to be a challenge. If the quarterback position was a competition, then it was gonna be interesting.”

Midway through training camp, a locker room fight left Smith with a broken jaw. In an instant, the locker room swung in Fitzpatrick’s favor. “It happened so fast, it wasn’t even funny,” Gailey said. “It took a day for everybody to get over the shock, but by Day 2 it was a done deal.”

Back with Gailey, Fitzpatrick was dropped back into a system he knew inside and out. This time, Buffalo’s band of ragtag skill position players had been replaced by high-priced, Pro Bowl-caliber receivers, “Brandon Marshall was my perfect receiver,” Fitzpatrick said. “We had a really good connection that year.” Fitzpatrick threw for 3,905 yards and 31 touchdowns that year as the Jets finished 10-6 and ranked 10th in Football Outsiders’ offensive DVOA — and only narrowly missed the playoffs after a loss to the Bills in their final game of the season.

“The success that we had was very surprising,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think it took [general manager] Mike Maccagnan by surprise. But my contract was up, and he had to make a decision after ‘15. We were gonna blow this thing up. But now they had to spend one more year trying to make a run at it.”

From the start of that offseason, the Jets and Fitzpatrick were at odds about his value and his future. Fitzpatrick says that from the beginning, he sought a one-year, $12 million deal. The Jets balked at that arrangement, hoping to tack on a second year at a lower price.

“The whole thing is absurd,” Fitzpatrick said. “I needed them because nobody else was going to sign me as the starter. And they needed me because they didn’t have anybody else out there. The season before was such a success, they would’ve gotten murdered if they didn’t bring me back. So it was kind of this stalemate where I didn’t have any cards to play, but they didn’t have anybody else to bring in.”

Throughout the spring, Jets teammates reached out to Fitzpatrick. Marshall says that he and Decker planned a holdout of their own, in an effort to show solidarity with their quarterback.

“Think about what we did that year,” Marshall said. “We did that without an offseason. We did that with him taking over the huddle halfway through camp when Geno Smith went down. And we were so excited to get back to work that offseason and build on that. And for them to be going back and forth over a contract where they were essentially trying to give him backup quarterback money, that was disrespectful. And that didn’t go well with me.”

The Jets and their scorned quarterback eventually forged an uneasy alliance that ended with the one-year, $12 million deal he’d wanted from the start, but the damage was already done. “I showed up basically an hour before the first meeting for training camp,” Fitzpatrick said. “Geno got up and left the meeting because he was pissed. And rightfully so. He did all the OTAs, and he felt like it was his team. I mean, it wasn’t. It was my team from the year before. That just created a toxicity that wasn’t there before.

A tenuous situation got worse when Decker and Marshall were injured early in the season. With Decker out of the lineup and Marshall hobbled, defenses could focus their attention on the Jets’ No. 1 receiver, and the lack of balls coming his way didn’t sit well with Marshall. “I didn’t handle everything perfectly in practice,” Marshall said. “There were some moments that I wish I had back, but I’m thankful that I was able to be strong enough to reach out to Ryan and say, ‘Man, I apologize.’ Our relationship is bigger than football and I care more about that than having a damn terrible year with the New York Jets.”

Over the course of the season, the Jets’ offense imploded. Fitzpatrick threw 17 interceptions in just 14 starts and was eventually pulled for Smith. After the season, Fitzpatrick retreated to family life. He was 33, had lasted in the NFL for more than a decade, and had pocketed tens of millions. If there was no joy left to mine from football, the game had given him enough.

“I thought I was done,” Fitzpatrick said. “I didn’t want to seek anything else out. I hated the game, and I wanted to get away from it. That was the first time in my life I ever felt that.”


“I just literally hated football that year,” Fitzpatrick said of his 2016 season with the Jets. (Charles Krupa / Associated Press)
A few weeks later, he was on a golf course somewhere in New Jersey when he got a call from Bucs first-year head coach Dirk Koetter. Tampa Bay wanted him to back up Jameis Winston, then entering a pivotal third season with the team.

Standing on the tee box, Fitzpatrick looked up how far Tampa was from Disney World. At the time, all six of his children were 10 or younger. It was an hour and change, he recalls. “We could go, live in Florida for a little bit, go experience all that. It really had nothing to do with football.”

Three games into the 2017 season, Fitzpatrick experienced a moment that would alter his football life. In Week 6, the Bucs traveled to Arizona to play the Cardinals. Winston was nursing a shoulder injury and struggled in the first half. With the Bucs trailing 24-0 late in the second quarter, Koetter pulled Winston and put in his well-traveled backup. What followed was the first of Fitzpatrick’s many wild stretches as the Bucs’ starter.

Tampa Bay’s offense traded haymakers with the Cardinals over the final two quarters, eventually cutting the lead to 38-33 with two minutes to play. “I was changing plays, and they were all working,” Fitzpatrick said. “It was one of those games that was so much fun for me.” In the end, the Bucs fell short, but Fitzpatrick finished 22-of-32 for 290 yards and three touchdowns — in just 35 minutes of game play.

In the Bucs facility the following day, Fitzpatrick and Tampa Bay’s other two quarterbacks met in the QB meeting room to go over the film. As the group discussed the game, Fitzpatrick began to break down. “He said he felt like he was 10 years younger, and it reminded him of why he’d first started playing when he was a kid,” said former Bucs quarterbacks coach Mike Bajakian. “And it was neat. It was neat that we kind of lit the fire in him again.”

“All the emotion that I had bottled up in 2016 just came out in that moment,” Fitzpatrick said. “It was like, ‘I do love this game. This is why I love this game.’ It was a very freeing moment for me.”

Freedom has come to define Fitzpatrick’s style as a QB. When he first stepped into Chan Gailey’s offensive system in 2010, he felt like he’d found his football soulmate. Gailey’s spread-out offense — which used four wide receivers at a rate that would make Kliff Kingsbury blush — replaced the rigid rules of most NFL systems with loose guidelines about how his players should operate. “He allowed me the ultimate freedom,” Fitzpatrick said. “He doesn’t really teach reads. He doesn’t really teach footwork. He cares about the result of the play. I loved it.”

Gailey’s offense provided a cozy environment that fostered some of the best stretches of Fitzpatrick’s career in their time together with the Bills, Jets and Dolphins. Theirs was an ideal professional partnership, with Gailey playing the Bernie Taupin to Fitzpatrick’s YOLO ball-slinging Elton John. “Fitz is smarter than I am,” Gailey said. The guy went to Harvard. I get that. … You’ve got to give him some leeway. Is he gonna throw it to the other team a couple times because he tries to make a throw that very few people can make because he believes in himself so much? Yeah. But you put up with that because of the great plays he’s gonna make.”

Over time, Fitzpatrick learned that it was possible to have too much leeway within Gailey’s system. As he bounced between offenses, he learned to appreciate the benefits of structure — and how different systems could shape and grow his approach to the position. With the Texans in 2014, Fitzpatrick was exposed to the classic Patriots system that put every detail of the game on its quarterback. “The QB was in control of everything,” he said. “The running game, the pass protection, where to go with the football, manipulating safeties. All these different things, I spent more time learning that year than any year of my career.”

With the Bucs in 2018, Fitzpatrick was able to combine that expertise with an offensive approach that aligned with his mindset as a quarterback. That year, Monken took over as the team’s primary play caller, and his bold style seamlessly meshed with the way Fitzpatrick wanted to play. “It was the absence of fear,” Fitzpatrick said. “You want to play QB and you want to call plays with an absence of fear. And that is how I play the game. That’s how he was calling games.”

Two years removed from confronting his football mortality, Fitzpatrick was playing like a quarterback with nothing left to lose — and nothing left to hide. After starting off red-hot through the Bucs’ first two games, Fitzpatrick famously donned DeSean Jackson’s clothes following a 400-yard outing against the Eagles in Week 2. Fitzpatrick’s famous off-the-field persona and his on-field play had finally merged into the Fitzmagic we now know. “Freeing is a great way to put it,” he said. “Playing with house money is a great way to put it. I’m playing on borrowed time. I shouldn’t even really be playing anymore.”



When asked if he and his wife have any regularly scheduled time away from the kids, Fitzpatrick lets out a “Ha!” from deep in his chest. The last time he and Liza had a meal alone was more than two years ago, when they grabbed lunch at Wright’s Gourmet Deli in Tampa on the day before their son Jake was born. During Ryan’s last two years in Miami, his family stayed behind at their house in Tampa. It’s an arrangement they’ll never try again.

Those close to Fitzpatrick wondered why he wanted to play for the rebuilding Dolphins when he had a similar offer to back up Deshaun Watson in Houston. “My agent was like, ‘What are you doing?’” Fitzpatrick said. “‘Why are you going to this place where they’re tearing down the team, and they don’t want to win?’ The simple answer is that this [was] an opportunity for me to play. I love playing football.”

Aside from the juice he gets from the game, Fitzpatrick also relishes the chance to shape the careers of teammates who need a jolt of confidence early in their careers. Miami’s baby-faced roster, full of promising but discouraged players like Mike Gesicki and DeVante Parker, provided the perfect chance. “I just told him, ‘Fitz, I don’t care what’s going on on the [scout] team field, but if you can get the ball thrown to Mike, let’s just see what he can do,'” said Dolphins tight ends coach George Godsey, who also served as the Texans QBs coach in 2014. “And he just said, ‘I got it.'”

“There are so many of these young guys who’ve never seen failure,” Fitzpatrick said. “They were the best kid in high school. They went to college, they were the best kid in college. And then they get to the NFL, and they struggle. And they don’t know how to deal with that.”

That shared history with the Dolphins’ inexperienced core served as the backdrop for Miami’s strange quarterback saga last season. Fitzpatrick was under no illusions when the Dolphins drafted Tua Tagovailoa with the fifth pick in the 2020 draft. He understood that the rookie was the future of the franchise, but there was never any communication before the season began about if and when Tagovailoa would be inserted into the lineup.

On the Monday of Miami’s bye week in late October, the veteran QB was riding high after two scorching performances by the Dolphins offense. Head coach Brian Flores summoned him to his office. Flores told him that the team was making a quarterback change. Tagovailoa would spend the bye week getting ready and would start the team’s next game, against the Rams.

“I have a ton of respect for [Flores], and we have a very good relationship,” Fitzpatrick said. “But I thought it was a joke at first. We’re putting Tua in? I was floored.”

Gailey, who had been hired as the team’s offensive coordinator before the season, learned about the move only a few hours before his longtime quarterback. “I was in total shock,” Gailey said. “We didn’t even have a preseason. It was a totally new offense [for Tua]. We were just starting to hit our stride. We’d won two in a row and scored a bunch of points and moved the ball well. It came as a shock to me.”

“That was my team,” Fitzpatrick said. “… I fought through the shit with those guys. I get the way that the NFL works. I get it. But to have it happen the way it did …”

Fitzpatrick was living in an Ft. Lauderdale hotel at the time, away from his family, who kept their house in Tampa. At the end of the day, he stopped for takeout at his regular Cuban spot, Padrino’s, in nearby Plantation, ready to face a quiet, lonely night in his room. Sitting outside the restaurant, he got a text from linebacker Kyle Van Noy, who asked if he could stop by. Fitzpatrick insisted he didn’t want company. “He said, ‘That’s fine, but I’m gonna be sitting in my hotel waiting for you,’” Fitzpatrick said.

Van Noy met his quarterback at the hotel, and the pair shared a couple bottles of wine as they discussed the fallout from the team’s decision.

The bye week gave him time to think about what the next stage of his tenure in Miami would look like. He considered how his young teammates might react if he returned as a sulking, discord-sowing malcontent. He thought about Tagovailoa, and the support he deserved. And he thought about what he wanted to show his sons. “I always think about my kids,” he said. “I think about my boys and how I want them to see me acting. I have to go through that exercise in my mind because that stuff is hard.”

When the Dolphins returned to practice, Fitzpatrick says he tried to downplay his displeasure. As teammates voiced their frustration, he insisted that it was their duty to help Tagovailoa in any way they could. He’d experienced a similar dynamic in Tampa with Winston two years earlier, when an unsettled QB situation could have destroyed an otherwise strong locker room.

“It’s also hard on them, the guy stepping into the role,” Fitzpatrick said. “So for me to be supportive and for me to be the guy that’s in their corner 100 percent and not whispering, ‘Yeah, I should be out there,’ behind their back. That kind of stuff fractures a locker room.”

With COVID-19 protocols and Miami’s QB tradeoff, Gailey calls the 2020 season “the hardest, most unbelievable year” he’s spent in the NFL. Through it all, he says that Fitzpatrick never wavered in his support of his rookie replacement.

“He understands the team aspect of it and what needs to be done,” Gailey said. “He has been in those shoes before. Just like he understands the game, he understands the dynamics of a team. And he understands the dynamics of an organization. Even though he might not agree with it, he understands there are some things that happen. You have so much respect for the guy because he gets the big picture.”

Both Gailey and Godsey maintain that the decision to pull Tagovailoa late in games during the back half of the season was rooted in Fitzpatrick’s grasp of the Dolphins’ two-minute offense. Tagovailoa simply hadn’t put in enough situational time to master Miami’s playcalls at the line of scrimmage. Godsey calls Fitzpatrick’s now-famous throw against Las Vegas in Week 16 — twisted facemask and all — “the best situational play” he’s ever seen.

Before jogging onto the field, Fitzpatrick told Godsey he was going to pump fake to the middle of the field and then attack down the sideline, and then did just that. As a gift, Godsey bought Fitzpatrick a framed photo of the play that now sits in the quarterback’s Arizona office.


“It was an electric locker room,” Godsey said. “We were all chest-thumping and we’re having a hell of a time, and we were out there in Las Vegas. I was hoping we’d take the team bus down to the Strip.”

Fitzpatrick’s late-game heroics did lead to a night of revelry for the Dolphins, and the effort also served as a stark comparison to Tagovailoa’s struggles through the first three quarters. “It’s not ideal when Ryan Fitzpatrick’s your backup and everyone knows he’s better,” said Lee Smith.

“Because everybody wants him to play. When there’s a clear-cut guy in front of him who’s a better football player, you might get away with it. But when Ryan Fitzpatrick, who’s one of the most beloved men in all of professional sports, is your backup, you’d better hope that you have a damn good one in front of him. Because if not, everybody’s gonna want him to be the one in the huddle.”

By about 9 a.m., all seven of the kids have emerged from their rooms and situated themselves on stools at the long counter on the patio. They’re seated roughly from oldest to youngest, with 14-year-old Brady on the far end and 2-year-old Jake on the other. As her husband slips pancakes off the hot surface, Liza waits with a pizza cutter and a can of whipped cream, slicing up the contents of each plate and sliding it to the next kid down the line.

“We don’t always do whipped cream,” Liza said. “But when we have it…”

“We don’t do moderation in this house,” Fitzpatrick said.

It’s a chaotic breakfast ballet that’s been honed over hundreds of identical mornings. By the time cleanup is finished, it’s typically time to start cooking again. There are three dishwashers — two inside, one out — and it’s not uncommon for all of them to be packed to the brim.

The whole clan will be in Arizona for a couple more weeks before heading to Virginia for the school year and the season. Fitzpatrick knows how unsettling all the displacement must seem from the outside, but he says that he and Liza have tried to frame each move as an exciting new journey.

“I think Brady, my oldest, has been in seven different school systems,” Fitzpatrick said of his son, who’s starting his freshman year of high school. “He’s done an awesome job adjusting and has set the tone for all the other kids. My wife has done a great job of saying, ‘This is an adventure. This is gonna be fun.’”

As they sell the younger kids on the magic of new places, Fitzpatrick says that for his older boys, his continued career provides a rare chance for a father to share in these moments with his children. “To be able to experience it with them, there aren’t a whole lot of guys that are gonna get to do that,” he said.

Seventeen years ago, Fitzpatrick was a rookie seventh-round pick who couldn’t spit out a play call in Mike Martz’s offense. Now he’s thrown touchdowns for more teams than any other quarterback in NFL history. And somehow, Fitzpatrick’s newest gig just might be the most promising of his career — a real chance as the starting quarterback of a team with playoff aspirations. That’s the reason Fitzpatrick is packing up his family and hitting the road again. As long as there’s a chance to play, he will be there, chucking jump balls and nurturing young teammates.

“The last two years in Miami, I was the only 30-plus-year-old guy on the team,” Fitzpatrick said. “I don’t think it’s very different in Washington.”

Those who know Fitzpatrick best say that when his days as a starter end, so will his time in the NFL. He’d rather be a dad than a backup collecting a paycheck and watching from the sideline.

“There’s a feeling I get on a football field that I don’t get anywhere else,” he said.

“I’ve never done drugs. So maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s chasing the high of whatever happens to your brain. When I play football, it’s the same way. There’s this high that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get anywhere else in my life.”

... Shiit has hit the fan

[Jean-Luc Picard]

Nas navijače Giantsa raduje forma koju u kampu demonstrira naš vrli kvorterbek.  

 

 

mogao bi @omiljeni ovaj play da nam izanalizira na novom topiku.  

[omiljeni]

Danny Dimes legenda

[James Marshall]

Bio je pod pritiskom

[radisa]

44 minutes ago, James Marshall said:

Bio je pod pritiskom

Jašta, najgore je kad ti niko ne smeta...

[omiljeni]

Pod pritiskom je bio zbog svog propusta, jer je taj blitzer njegova odgovornost. Dok ovaj blitza Danny gleda levo, ali on tu ne gleda da li može da baci pass svom čoveku već pokušava da uradi look off sejftija, tj da ga očima pomeri sa sredine terena na levu stranu, pa da se tu otvori prostor za ovog receivera što dolazi sa desne strane.

ono, ugasi se auto baš kad je na pruzi, voz stiže i sudar je neizbežan, a lik uzmeš da prazni pikslu i podešava retrovizor umesto da beži. Nerazumevanje situacije level 9000

Trening je pa ga ovaj što blitza neće udariti, a i pustiće ga da baci pas da ne propadne rep, ali bolje bi bilo da su prekinuli play jer Danny ne zna šta da radi sa loptom. 3 ili čak 4 hitch steps, ne vidi se najbolje jer mnogo mrda kameru, pa onda ovako baci pravo u linebackera. Zajebao je bukvalno sve što je trebalo da uradi.

 

@Jean-Luc Picard

jel to Wiggins startuje pre Lemieuxa?

[Jean-Luc Picard]

Ako misliš za sutra veče nemam pojma. Jedino znam da Jones neće igrati. 

Za sezonu ipak mislim da će Hernandez i Lemieux biti starteri na guardu pa da će se odatle krenuti. 

[omiljeni]

Na ovom snimku su sve starteri i Higgins medju njima, a mislio sam da ce vam Lemieux biti starter pa reko da pitam o cemu se radi

[Jean-Luc Picard]

Sad sam se setio. Lemieux je imao neku povredu pre desetak dana, mislim da je tek pre dva dana krenuo lagano da trenira. Znaš ono izdvojeno sa rekonvalescentima...vežbe i trčkaranje. Nije trenirao u opremi. 

[Frank Pembleton]

... Shiit has hit the fan

[Jean-Luc Picard]

@omiljeni

 

Ti pratiš koledž pa mi reci molim te, ima li kakav zanimljiv QB prospekt na draftu 2022, pošto mi deluje da ćemo se izljubiti i sa Getlemanom i sa Deni Dajmsom kad se ova sezona završi...a imaćemo dva solidno visoka pika prve runde

[omiljeni]

Uvek ima sledeci novi zanimljivi prospect. To je velika zemlja sa 330 miliona stanovnika gde svako musko dete sanja da bude quarterback, pa ce se naci i neki mucenik da bude starter u Giantsima.
Rattler sa Oklahome, Howell sa UNC, Corral sa Ole Miss, Slovis sa USC, zaboravio sam kako se zove momak koji igra na Liberty, Nevada isto ima solidnog igraca, Purdy sa Iowa State. Jurkovec je nase gore list ali obzirom da je sa Notre Dame presao na BC cenim da je verovatno Hrvat

[omiljeni]

vaš najbolji igrač od pre neko veče na utakmici protiv Jetsa, WR David Sills je nekad davno bio Qb wonderkid i sledeći veliki prospect.

Imao je bukvalno 13 godina kad ga je Lane regrutovao na USC. Sada on ima 25 i sve ovo se dešavalo pre više od 10 godina. U to vreme je bio otprilike najpoznatiji tinejdžer u Americi posle Justina Biebera i Miley Cyrus   ESPN i druge televizije stalno izveštavale o njemu i pravile dokumentarce. Ćale mu je lovator sa istočne obale, kad je skontao kako ima talentovanog sina napravio je fiktivnu srednju školu i doveo tu 40-50 momaka od kojekude da napravi tim oko svog sina koji bi se mogao šibati protiv najvećih high school programa širom Amerike. Ali je sve otišlo kvragu kad je mali povredio ruku, pa je zbog povrede menjao throwing motion i u svemu tome je izgubio mojo. Kad je prispeo da ide na koledž Lane je već uveliko bio otpušten na USC i imali su Darnolda i ostale QBs pa je Sills ostao bez angažmana^TM, ali ga je na Holgorsen pozvao da dođe na West Virginia. On je Sillsa ošacovao kad je recruitovao RB Smallwooda (Eagles ga posle draftovali u 4-5 rundi) koji je bio jedan od tih 50ak igrača koji su pohađali tu fiktivnu ćaletovu "srednju školu".

Holgorsen je Sillsa hteo da prebaci na WR, Sills to nije želeo, posle otišao da igra za neku školu u Kaliforniji na nekom najnižem nivou koledž fudbala, da bi se na kraju ipak pomirio sa činjenicom da neće biti QB i onda je došao da igra WR na WVU kod Holgorsena. U sezoni 2017 je vodio ceo koledž fudbal sa 18 uhvaćenih TDs, a u 2018 je bio drugi na toj listi sa 15 TDs.

[ObiW]

Timothy Richard Tebow je cutovan od strane Jacksovila, sto nije nikakvo iznenadjenje. Nesto se mislim dokle ce on jos da se blamira pokusavajuci da se profesionalno bavi nekim sportom ili da komentarise college football, i odgovor mi se javio u ... "... 34 year oldTim Tebow...". Donji limit za House of Represenatatives je 35 godina, nas heroj dogodine moze da pocne kampanju negde u nekom duboko crvenom okrugu na jugu za mesto u House of Representatives u Vasingtonu. Gluplji od njega su uspeli da se nakace na drzavnu sisu, red bi bio da i on proba.

Edited August 20, 2021 by ObiW

[omiljeni]

1 hour ago, ObiW said:

Timothy Richard Tebow je cutovan od strane Jacksovila, sto nije nikakvo iznenadjenje. Nesto se mislim dokle ce on jos da se blamira pokusavajuci da se profesionalno bavi nekim sportom ili da komentarise college football, i odgovor mi se javio u ... "... 34 year oldTim Tebow...". Donji limit za House of Represenatatives je 35 godina, nas heroj dogodine moze da pocne kampanju negde u nekom duboko crvenom okrugu na jugu za mesto u House of Representatives u Vasingtonu. Gluplji od njega su uspeli da se nakace na drzavnu sisu, red bi bio da i on proba.