2007 Outlook

Once Garcia left San Francisco after 2003, he had two very mediocre seasons in CLE and DET before landing in Philadelphia last year. Ends up that was a good move by the Eagles coaching staff since Donovan McNabb suffered yet another season ending injury and Garcia started six games. While he had one 312 yard effort, he only had two others around 240 yards and the remaining three were very low – 189, 140 and 164 yards. But he threw at least one score in each game and half his starts resulted in two or more touchdowns. The Eagles opted to let Garcia leave since his impressive play made him a more desirable commodity on the free agent market. The 37-year old Garcia signed a two-year deal with the Buccaneers for an undisclosed amount.

While Chris Simms was the starter in 2006 before getting injured, there’s no guarantee he returns in that role. Garcia and Simms will battle in training camp for the starting role. Simms would seem to have an upper hand since he is familiar with the offense, but the Bucs are impressed with how quickly Garcia picked it up in the spring. He has spent all his time either at the team’s training facility or at home studying. Garcia has to make up ground in order to beat out Simms but so far he’s been doing exactly that. Simms busiest year was 2005 when he started 10 games but only had 2035 yards and ten scores. Garcia just did that much in six games last year.

The reality here is that the winner of the starter role still likely won’t merit anything more than being a very deep fantasy back-up. If you wait far too long to grab your back-up quarterback, make certain of the situation here before taking either Simms or Garcia. And know that there’s no guarantee that either would play the entire season anyway.

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