Because of the nature of playing for Bill Belichick and the Patriots, Jimmy Garoppolo never really opened up about going up against and playing under Tom Brady during his time in New England.
But, now that he's on the West Coast and with the 49ers, that changed in an extensive feature by Bleacher Report's (and former WEEI.com intern) Joon Lee.
Garoppolo touched on a number of topics, including going up against Brady on a day-to-day basis. The Eastern Illinois product admitted he had the mindset that he was better than him.
"I've always had that mindset," Garoppolo said. "I knew that [Brady] was better than me in my first day in the NFL. Naturally, you're the rookie and he's the veteran, but you have to have that mindset, that you want to be the starter."
He added: "Even when I was a little kid, my brothers, whenever we would play, I would literally always think I was going to win. I wouldn't, but I would always think that. It's like when I go to New England, when I first got there, I thought in my head, 'I'm better than this dude."
Lee pressed Garoppolo by asking, "But in your head, you believe you're better than Tom Brady?"
"It was always a quiet confidence," he responded. "I would never speak that."
Garoppolo added: "I'm not stupid. You have to pick your battles, but I had belief in myself that I could do certain things, and it's always worked out pretty well. It will always be in me, that drive that comes from my dad telling me that someone is always working harder, that I'm always in last place and I need to catch up to someone else."
The former Patriots quarterback also detailed how competitive he and Brady were. The two would play the bucket game after practices where they would throw the ball into a bucket in the corner of the end zone from certain distances.
"There would be days where one of us would win and you wouldn't talk to the other for a little while," Garoppolo said. "We'd be fine the next day, but it was one of the best things for me. We would push each other and we got two Super Bowls out of it."
"The competitiveness between the two of us was very similar. If I'm playing my best friend in one-on-one basketball, if we are both into it, by the end, we are going to hate each other," he added. "That's how it is. All the good competitors have that. We got along, but there were always times where we wanted to kill each other. It was a healthy, competitive relationship."
It's quite apparent now why Brady could have been threatened by Garoppolo, as not only could he do special things on the field, he had the right mindset off it.
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