On the night last May when Jimmy Garoppolo was drafted, his personal quarterback coach, Jeff Christensen, had a hunch. He called his son and predicted that Garoppolo would be chosen by the New England Patriots.
“He goes, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘I just think they are; I can feel it,’ ” Christensen said. “Because visually, and maybe even emotionally, Jimmy probably reminds them of Tom.”
Christensen, a former N.F.L. quarterback who now runs an academy for quarterbacks and receivers outside Chicago, had been tutoring Garoppolo for about seven years, ever since Garoppolo started playing quarterback as a high school junior.