Wheel O’ Quarterbacks Will Land On Garcia On Sunday

Jeff Garcia is going to take all the starter snaps today and tomorrow in practice giving him about a 100% chance (margin of error: +/- squat) to start against the Panthers. I’m so excited! Now instead of 1-step drops and check off passes, we get mad scrambling and desperation dump off passes! Woo hoo!

Actually, Garcia will probably give the offense a slightly better chance to score than Brian Griese. Whereas Griese was healthy and somehow making the passing game less efficient than the running game, Garcia was not 100% at the beginning of the season and it affected his performance. What’s that you say? Garcia said after week 1 that he could play through his ankle problem?

“I’ve played through a lot worse,” said Garcia, who completed 24 of 41 passes for 221 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 interception against the Saints. “Everybody in this locker room is going to play through some sort of pain, nick or injury.”

Yeah, turns out that maybe the ankle was a problem after all.

“I’m a lot more healthy at this time. I’m not favoring anything. I feel the speed is back, the explosion within the pocket, the mobility within the pocket. So those things are definitely better than going into the first week. Not to say that was an excuse, because it wasn’t.”

I had just written this snarky paragraph about how Garcia was hurting his team by playing through the injury just to be able to say that he was a starter. But then I also encourage players to man up and play through pain for the good of the team, so I deleted it. I guess it comes down to the question of if your pain is preventing you from performing your job. If it’s just painful but you’re able to play with it and not damage yourself further, take a shot and stick it out. If the injury is keeping you from, say, planting your foot and throwing properly, or there’s a chance that playing on it will make it worse, take yourself out of the game. Is the guy behind you at 100% better than you at 75%? Then let him play and get yourself healthy. Garcia was obviously not at his best for the season opener despite his statements to the contrary. It’s only fair to give him a shot while he’s completely healthy before we berate the shit out of him.

But this is a blog and we don’t have to be fair, so feel free to leave your anti-Garcia bile in the comments.