Jimmy Garoppolo is Signing With the Raiders

MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images. Getty Images.

Well, what took so long? 

Granted, free agency hasn't even technically begun, but still it feels like this dragged on longer than it ever needed to, if that makes sense. Or like we'll look back on this years from now and think that Josh McDaniels brought Jimmy Garoppolo with him when he first got to Las Vegas. You'll be in a bar and someone will mention Derek Carr and the Raiders and you'll have to look it up to confirm that yes, McDaniels and Carr worked together for a year. 

Because this seems like just such a natural move. The No Braineriest signing in the history of No Brainers. Enough so to make one wonder why we ever speculated where Jimmy G would land or whom the Raiders planned to replace Carr with. The whole reason they never sweated losing their QB1 is because this was the plan all along. Ride out 2022 with the guy you don't want. Wait until a respectable hour or so of the tampering period to go by, announce you got your man. 

McDaniels raised Garoppolo from a pup. He might have actually been fine making the transition from Tom Brady to him around 2017 were it not for Brady screwing up the master plan by being a freak of nature who defeated time itself. After all, here are the game logs of the two times this coach and this QB ever collaborated, during Brady's phony baloney suspension in September, 2016:

That is until, and stop me if you've heard this since, Jimmy G got injured. From there, he only saw mop up duty the rest of the season. But McDaniels never forgot that feeling. He's been chasing that high ever since. That was his first time developing a quarterback that no coach had gotten to first since he took Tim Tebow's innocence on their wedding night in 2010. And that did not go as well. 

So he gets his man. Garoppolo presumably gets the coach he's wanted all along. He definitely gets to put a franchise in his rearview that clearly stopped loving him around 2020, when they lost him - stop me again if this sounds familiar - to injury halfway through the season after he took them to the Super Bowl. I mean, how can you argue they had feeling for him when John Lynch invested three 1st round picks in his replacement, Trey Lance. Who has had a harder time staying on the field than Jimmy G. Judging by this reaction, the irony of that is not lost on Garoppolo:

That is the smile of a man who knows exactly what his future holds. And it's been Las Vegas all along. Much to the consternation of the few remaining fans who still believed in him:

McDaniels and Garoppolo. Putting the old 2016 band back together again. Free agency doesn't even start for two days, and already it's wild. Just wait until it begins for real.