Garcia should make hall
Is Jeff Garcia Hall of Fame material?
The next few years will give us the final answer but if he
doesn’t get in, he can blame it on those five seasons he spent in
the CFL
– when nobody would give the four-time Pro Bowler a chance.
Garcia should make hall
Is Jeff Garcia Hall of Fame material?
The next few years will give us the final answer but if he doesn’t get in, he can blame it on those five seasons he spent in the CFL – when nobody would give the four-time Pro Bowler a chance.
Take those five lost years in Canada and put Jeff in an NFL uniform and he has roughly 12,500 more passing yards, which puts him over the 35,000 mark for his career.
Jeff has also averaged 16.5 touchdown tosses a season in the NFL – five more years and Garcia would now have roughly 231 TDs for his NFL career, putting him just one TD less than the NFL’s 20th TD passer of all-time. His name: Steve Young.
Without any help from our neighbors to the north, Garcia is 12th all-time in passer rating at 87.2 and 16th all time in completion percentage (61.2%).
Garcia is also a winner and proves it time and time again when given the chance. Look at what he did for the 49ers after Steve Young retired. Look at what he did when Donovan McNabb went down in Philly – 10 TDs and 2 Ints in 8 games with a QB rating of 95.8. No wonder why Philly fans were ticked off when he was let go.
And look at what he did for the Bucs last year – 13 TDs to only 4 picks, and a QB rating of 94.6 last season.
Although his average yards-per-game is a little low (203.8), he’s still 29th all-time in that department as well.
The voting won’t take place until five years after his retirement from the NFL but I say Garcia will make it to Canton, Ohio one day.
What all of this statistical information also tells me is just how dumb the 49ers front office was to let Garcia go in the spring of 2004 – a year before drafting the hapless Alex Smith in 2005 with the top pick overall.
Instead, the Niners should have given Garcia more money and kept him. Garcia may be 38 and in the twilight of his career but a 38-year-old Garcia is still outperforming the 24-year-old Alex Smith by leaps and bounds.
All I can say is thank God for Bill Walsh – the only guy to recognize the gunslinger from Gilroy’s talent and intangibles on the playing field. Without Walsh, Garcia probably would have finished his career in Canada before retiring to Gilroy.
Although he never had the strongest arm or the most orthodox throwing motion, and was never the tallest QB on the roster sheet, Garcia has always had the intangibles that all great players have.
And I will say this, had Jeff Garcia been born with the physical stature and arm strength of the underachieving Alex Smith while keeping the same amount of scrambling ability and gut-wrenching determination that he has always shown on the playing field, Jeff Garcia might have gone down as the greatest quarterback who ever played the game…
