49ers RB Jeff Wilson Jr. on Tom Brady Rumors: "It's Ludicrous"
Rumors and hypothetical scenarios about Tom Brady signing with the San Francisco 49ers has spread like wildfire.
Ever since Hall of Famer Deion Sanders brought up this idea on the telecast of the NFL scouting combine on Sunday this has been one of the most talked topics in football. This absurd narrative has garnered more attention than it should have, because quite frankly, this isn't going to happen by any stretch.
Calling this idea of Brady to the Niners as absurd is just one of many words used to describe it. Ludicrous would be another sound adjective in this situation, which is exactly how 49ers running back Jeff Wilson Jr. felt regarding these rumors.
I had the pleasure of speaking to Wilson yesterday in regards to the narrative that the 49ers should cut ties with Jimmy Garoppolo in favor of signing Brady.
"It's ludicrous." Said Wilson. "He just took us all the way to the Super Bowl, great season, 14 wins. I mean there's not a lot of quarterbacks that's even in this league that just had a season like that. And then you go from that season taking a team all the way to the Super Bowl, to talks of being traded.
"He's a great quarterback, he's been that way ever since he's been to San Fran. It's just unfortunate that he got hurt the year before and then kind of, you know, threw him back in the wilderness a little bit but he came right back in like he never left and took a team all the way to the Super Bowl, so how can you talk about moving him? Or trading him to another team?"
Wilson is absolutely spot on about this in his defense of his quarterback. The overall body of work of Garoppolo in 2019 has fallen on deaf ears. This is a perfect case of recency bias. Garoppolo's fourth quarter performance in the Super Bowl was nothing short of poor. However, that one quarter of football is being used to summarize his talent.
As Wilson points out, Garoppolo just came off of a torn ACL and was thrown into "the wilderness". His ceiling hasn't even been reached yet, which is exactly why Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch were so enthusiastic about Garoppolo's future.
He still has time to clean up some of his issues and reflect on mistakes from last season. The best part of all is that he will have an offseason where he will get to improve upon himself since last season was all about getting his injured knee prepared.
It's facts like this that get constantly overlooked about Garoppolo and simply isn't talked about enough. That is what led me to ask Wilson about what gets overlooked and isn't talked about enough regarding Garoppolo.
"He's a leader." Said Wilson. "And then when it's crunch time it's like he turns into a totally different person. It's not the cool, calm and collected Jimmy Garoppolo anymore. It's the leader of a national football team, and a very good one at that.
"So that's the type of person that he comes in, he gets everybody's attention, and he makes everybody focus and makes everybody want to play hard for him. And when you have somebody that can do that, especially your quarterback I mean your team is destined for greatness."
