Ex-teammate David Garrard backs Jacksonville Jaguars QB Blaine Gabbert to improve his form-NFL News
Jacksonville Jaguars’ rookie quarterback, Blaine Gabbert has found another supporting voice of the former colleague, David Garrard, who believes the player has potential to improve from current level of the form.
Gabbert had come under fire over his poor form during the 2011 National Football League (NFL) season, but the team, who are coming into the next season with a new coach and new owner, expect him to prove his worthiness for the role.
Jaguars’ new head coach, Mike Mularkey, who met Gabbert soon after coming to Jacksonville, had hoped to expect the same from the player, as now Garrard has spoken of.
Garrard said:
"I know he can do it; I just think everything was happening so fast for him last year. Trying to protect himself, trying to live to the next down. The best ones do it. Brees does it. Brady does it. You just have to do it."
He backed the rookie to prepare himself to face hits and work out on the present habit of ducking down and some other weakness.
Mularkey too had noted similar habits in the player, which he said, were hindering an improvement in his game skills and he would have to quit those habits to prove his potential and skills.
The coach said that the rookie was in the second year at the team and it was time for him to show off his skills and form, otherwise, other options might be awaiting him in the future.
It is pertinent to recall that the quarterback had remained a source of criticism on Jaguars former coach, Del Rio, who had persisted with him under the same hopes and ignored his successive failings on the starting position.
At the end the team lost the coach as well as the owner, Wayne Weaver, who in a belief to have served the team well during all those years, sell it to its present owner, Shahid Khan.
Now the player has once again become spotlight of the talks and people around him who remain concerned about his continued poor form and urged him to workout on the shortcomings during the offseason to join the squad as an improved player next season.
On this, the ex-teammate, David Garrard, has a piece of advice for him that:
"You can't learn to be brave in the pocket, but if he just trains his mind to think, 'You're going to get hit. Most of the time they really don't hurt, it just catches you off guard. But you're going to get hit. He's just got to develop that in his mind,
in his body, in his being on his own. Nobody can say stand out there and take the shot. But you've got to do that."
Garrard was a quarterback at Jaguars along with Gabbert during the past preseason, but the team cut him just before start of the regular season, due to his injury.
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