Culture
After some 'chaotic' seasons, Rams QB Jimmy Garoppolo is having fun again
LOS ANGELES — After a wild few seasons, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo finally looks relaxed.
The 10-year veteran has returned to a backup role, with both Garoppolo and the Los Angeles Rams recognizing it was the perfect time to unite. Garoppolo was looking for some solid footing, while the Rams wanted a reliable insurance policy for starter Matthew Stafford.
It’s been a great pairing so far, especially after Garoppolo dealt with so much uncertainty in recent years.
“It was chaotic at times, but they’re all learning experiences,” Garoppolo told The Athletic. “That’s one thing I’ve taken from this. The NFL is crazy, man. Everyone has got a story. Everyone is going whichever way trying to make it. But at the end of the day, it’s your story, and you’ve got to make the best of it. Good, bad, or indifferent, whatever happened in the past, it happened. … Now I’m here, and I’m just trying to make every day the best day.”
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Garoppolo’s career as a whole has been remarkably eventful. The New England Patriots drafted him in the second round in 2014, with Bill Belichick pointing toward Tom Brady’s age as a primary reason for exploring a potential succession plan. But when Brady’s play didn’t diminish as he got older, the Patriots traded Garoppolo to the San Francisco 49ers in 2017.
Garoppolo tore his ACL in 2018, guided the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2019 and lost most of his 2020 season due to a high ankle sprain. Garoppolo maintained the starting job in 2021 after the Niners made a massive draft investment in Trey Lance, but the team had prepared to turn to Lance in 2022, causing an unpredictable chain reaction that seemed to lay the groundwork for Garoppolo’s trade or release. Instead, he reworked his contract and subbed in for Lance after his gruesome ankle injury in Week 2 but eventually went down again with his own Lisfranc injury, paving the way for Brock Purdy’s emergence.
Nary a dull moment, Garoppolo endured a grueling recovery from offseason foot surgery before joining the Las Vegas Raiders in 2023, but he was benched midseason on the same day of head coach Josh McDaniels’ firing.
So you can see why a backup job with the Rams and an opportunity to reset was appealing for Garoppolo.
“It’s really nice having a healthy offseason,” Garoppolo said. “I haven’t had one of those in a while. The foot surgery was tough last year. For anyone who’s ever been through that, that wasn’t a fun recovery, but I feel like I’m back to myself. Being in this role, I get to experiment with some things, being with the 2s. I get to be myself. I haven’t had that in a little while, so it feels nice to get back to that.
Garoppolo largely credited Stafford and Rams coach Sean McVay for being the reasons he wanted to play in Los Angeles. McVay, in particular, impressed Garoppolo when the two chatted on the phone. Garoppolo, who drew interest from other teams, also was eager to learn about Stafford’s process.
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Garoppolo, who will serve a two-game suspension to start the season after violating the league’s performance-enhancing drug policy, also understood during the offseason that a guaranteed starting job wasn’t going to be on the table. Sure, he could have gone somewhere to compete with a young quarterback, but that would have led to a similar dynamic that he experienced in San Francisco where the organization would inevitably lean on the long-term investment. Similarly, teams starting over at QB generally have head coaches whose job security isn’t as stable, which he just witnessed in Vegas.
McVay is as close to a sure thing as there is in the league, and his offensive scheme speaks for itself. The vibe in the Rams’ building is also as strong as it gets.
There was a litany of reasons for Garoppolo to take a step back in southern California.
“This place allows you to be yourself, too, which is different than other places I’ve been. You’re getting pressed with a sense of urgency but in a good way. Obviously, everyone wants to win. Everyone wants to perform well. They do it in the right way here. They push you positively. There’s just a lot of good things going on, man. I’m enjoying every bit of it. Even the meetings are a good time. Everything is going good right now.”
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(Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions — or even books. With the Academy Award nominations announced last week, this week’s challenge celebrates past Oscar-winning films that were based on books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.
Not every poem about love is a love poem. This one, from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” first published in 1794, is more analytical than romantic. Instead of roses and violets, it offers us dirt and rocks.
William Blake (1757-1827), obscure in his own time and a hero to later generations of poets and spiritual seekers, made his living as an engraver and illustrator. He conceived and executed many of his poetic projects as works of visual as well as literary art, etching his verses and images onto copper plates and printing them in vivid color — a style designed to blur the boundary between word and picture.
“The Clod & the Pebble” is set in a rustic tableau populated by wild and domesticated animals. In the print, we can’t quite see the main characters, who are presumably somewhere beneath the hooves and the ripples. But the cows and sheep, the frogs and the duck, are nonetheless connected to the poem’s meaning.
The two sections of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” are meant to illustrate “the contrary states of the human soul” — the purity and wonder associated with early childhood and the harder knowledge that inevitably follows.
“The Clod & the Pebble” recapitulates this fall from sweetness into disillusionment, and the plate suggests it in contrasting ways. The wild animals down below symbolize a natural condition of innocence, while the livestock above live in confinement, bound to another’s use. At the same time, though, the cows and sheep are peaceful ruminants, while the frogs and the duck are predators.
In the poem, the Clod is an avatar of innocence. As it happens, this is a recurring character in the Blakean poetic universe. In “The Book of Thel,” a fantastical meditation composed a few years before the publication of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” the Clod appears as a maternal figure selflessly nursing a baby worm:
The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice, & raisd her pitying head;
She bow’d over the weeping infant, and her life exhal’d
In milky fondness
“We live not for ourselves,” she tells the poem’s heroine, a young girl named Thel. But in Blake’s system self-sacrifice can never be the last word. There is no innocence without the fall into experience, and no experience without the memory of innocence. Giving gives way to wanting.
Question 1/6
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Get to know the poem better by filling in the missing words below.
First, the Clod’s perspective.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of 21st-century books that were inspired by ancient myths, legends and folk tales. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
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