Patriots quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo got negative reviews for his work in an intrasquad scrimmage last week and said that he’d work with coaches to “diagnose what happened and what we could do to fix that.”
Thursday night’s game against the Jaguars went better for Garoppolo. The Patriots offense got off to a slow start with two three-and-outs sandwiched around a field goal, but Garoppolo played into the third quarter and things picked up as the game went along. He finished the night 22-of-28 for 235 yards and two touchdowns, but without an answer as to why his game performance is better than what he showed in practice.
“It’s not on purpose,” Garoppolo said in comments distributed by the team. “I don’t know. I try to go out there and practice well every day with the guys. I mean, you’re trying different things in practice sometimes. You’re working with different guys. But, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s really a rhyme or reason to it. It’s football at the end of the day.”
There’s a lot of time before the Patriots will have to make any final decisions about holding onto Garoppolo when his contract expires at the end of the season, but he won’t be playing much if all goes according to plan in the regular season. That makes preseason outings significant and Thursday night wound up as a decent start to that phase of the calendar.