Fitz Talks: His New Start, His Disappointing Finish, Kudos for a New OC
Ryan Fitzpatrick kicked off the next chapter of his long and adventurous NFL life when he conducted his introductory press conference with his latest team, the Washington Football Team.
Fitzpatrick will be playing for his ninth team after spending the past two seasons with the Miami Dolphins, for whom he earned team MVP honors in 2019 and helped make a push for the playoffs in 2020.
That Fitzpatrick would leave as an unrestricted free agent this offseason seemed like a given all along considering how often he mentioned the past two seasons that what keeps him going in his late 30s is competing and the chance to play.
And that's exactly what he said again Thursday when he also touched on some Dolphins-related topics.
"I just love playing football. I love being out there. After this last season, the climb that I’ve made in my career, I’m playing better right now than I’ve ever played in my career. I just feel like I’ve got a lot of great football ahead of me, which sounds crazy being 38 years old and figuring some things out about myself. I love football. I love the competition. I love the comradery. I love working together as a team for a common goal.
"Those are just things that I don’t know where else I’d find that. So, after last season and sitting down with my wife and just saying: ‘Look, I think I’m playing better than I ever have, and I still love this game.’ She just looked at me and said: ‘You’d be crazy not to keep playing.’ That’s a lot of the reason why I still do it. A side note from that, just having seven little kids that are able to kind of experience this with me and just see what Dad does for a living, that’s a lot of fun for me, too.”
What wasn't fun for Fitzpatrick was the way his time in Miami ended.
A week after coming off the bench to help the Dolphins pull off a miraculous victory against the Las Vegas Raiders that kept them in control of their playoff fate, Fitzpatrick was forced to sit out the season finale at Buffalo after landing on the COVID-19/Reserve list.
With Fitzpatrick away from the team and unable to help if needed, the Dolphins ended up on the very wrong end of a 56-26 result that knocked them out of the playoffs.
“It was rough," Fitzpatrick said. "It was the ultimate high of Week 16 coming in against the Raiders and having the end of the game comeback, then coming back three days later and finding out that now I had COVID. It went to the ultimate high to the ultimate low, sitting in a room quarantining for 10 days and missing my son’s birthday. It was a tough two weeks there.
"Just like everybody else in the country, we’ve done our best to try to manage it and stay safe. I know that my situation, it was tough, but there were a lot of people that had a lot worse things. I’m glad that part of it is over and none of my family got it besides me. That was probably the one positive of them being in Tampa last year and me being in Miami. That was the ultimate high and the ultimate low for me back-to-back weeks.”
Fitzpatrick would not reveal Thursday how many teams showed an interest in him in free agency, though he did take a shot at the report suggesting he was leaning toward retirement, a report we refuted a few days later when we confirmed he still very much wanted to keep playing.
Truth is, Fitzpatrick has been playing the best football of his career over the past three seasons, one with Tampa Bay and the two with Miami.
Fitzpatrick said his turnaround as a quarterback came at a time when he got to work with one of the Dolphins' two new co-offensive coordinators.
“I think when I look at my career, I think 2014 when I got with Bill O’Brien in Houston and George Godsey as my quarterbacks coach, that was a turning point in my career," Fitzpatrick said. "They helped me see the game in a different way. Since then, I just feel like I’ve become a much better player. 2016 was a rough year for me for a lot of different reasons. But from ’14-on, I feel like I’ve just gotten better every single year. I had a chance to learn a couple different offenses from a couple different coordinators and coaches, and I just continue to incorporate things that I like about different offenses and things I’ve grown to like about my playing experience every year. I think it’s really helped me.”
While he's excited to keep playing and getting a legitimate chance to compete for a starting job, there is one way about Washington that's a bit of a drawback for Fitzpatrick.
And it's got to do with his famous beard.
“I found the right barber," he said. "It’s going to be tough moving away from him in Tampa — shout-out to Ali. Other than that, I’ve got to run a comb through it every morning. I don’t really brush my hair, but I do have to brush my beard. That’s about it.”
