McDaniels Shares Thoughts on Garoppolo's Injury History

Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo has had his fair share of injuries over his NFL career.

The Las Vegas Raiders are taking a bit of a risk with having Jimmy Garoppolo as their starting quarterback.

As promising as the veteran quarterback's winning track record is, Garoppolo has suffered a number of injuries in his NFL career, most recently having broken his foot that sat him for the last leg of the regular season and the entirety of the postseason.

But Garoppolo's former offensive coordinator, Raiders Coach Josh McDaniels, is optimistic about his quarterback's health.

"I mean, look, anytime a guy has injuries, I mean, you look into all of those things," McDaniels said at the NFL's Annual League Meeting on Monday. "Generally, his injuries haven't been connected to one another. Shoulder, foot, ankle, knee, etc. So it's not one area of his body. So some of its circumstance, some of it's just bad luck, if you will. But generally speaking, the backup quarterback position or the depth at that spot is obviously something that you need to address and try to do it the right way.

"We're doing a deep dive, obviously, in the draft. I would love to have a quarterback room that's got guys who are young, developing, under contract that you can continue to work with every year as opposed to try to do the veteran route every season, if you can. So we'll see how it goes and how this next month and a half shakes out, but [I am] confident Jimmy will be ready to roll, and [we] certainly need to do our work and do a good job of finding our backup plan."

McDaniels said he's had experiences with having both a veteran and a rookie as the backup quarterback.

"Jimmy actually ended up being the backup when he was a rookie," McDaniels said. "Jarrett Stidham actually was the backup when he was a rookie. So there's an element of that. If I'm not mistaken, Matt Cassel and, I think it was, [Doug] Flutie and Cassel were together a little bit, so we had a couple guys there. But it's not one thing, you know what I mean? Depending on how you go about finding that spot and who the kid is. It could be a rookie; it could be a veteran. 

"I think the goal, though, is to try to eventually draft a player at that position who you continue to move forward with and develop. We've done that, I've done that, I've been a part of that, I enjoy doing that. I think it's a really good philosophy to have organizationally so you're not chasing a brand new backup quarterback every year and trying to identify who the best fit is. So [we will] see if we can figure that out in the next month here."

The 2023 NFL Draft will go from April 27-29 and be held at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo. The 2023 NFL Year and Free Agency period began at 4 p.m. EDT on March 15.

The Raiders are expected to be significant players in the free-agent market this offseason.

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