Is Fox Sports' 'Hamilton' Parody a Sign of Jimmy Garoppolo Fever? Watch and Make a Diagnosis (VIDEO)

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL — For two NFL seasons, backup starting New England Patriots quarterback and Rolling Meadows High School grad Jimmy Garoppolo was Arlington Heights' private "local boy done good" story. He was the village's sports equivalent to a short-lived, Jon Cryer sitcom that only you and your closest, coolest friends thought was brilliant, but your clique wasn't enough to keep the series from being cancelled. Call it The Famous Jimmy G.¹

But that was before Garoppolo won his first NFL game as starting quarterback this past Sunday. Now, the Arlington Heights native is looking like another Jon Cryer TV series—a wildly popular, wildly successful series—as the league moves into Week 2 of its season. Think of it as Two and a Half Quarterbacks.

Admittedly, that's a long way to say that Garoppolo and his performance on the gridiron have him slightly dimming the shine cast by football's current Golden Boy, Tom Brady, who was suspended for the first four games of the season over the Deflategate fiasco.

RELATED: Watch Jimmy Garoppolo Score TDs for Rolling Meadows Before He Was a Patriot (VIDEO)

So it must be asked: Is America coming down with terminal Jimmy Garoppolothy? Has the country contracted an incurable case of Stage IV Garoppolosis? Will Chronic Pats' Backup QB Syndrome (a.k.a. How Tom Brady Got His Starting Job Disease) reach Garoppolodemic proportions comparable to past outbreaks of Beatlemania and disco fever?

Let's look at the symptoms:

Garoppolo is the basis of a comedy sketch and not just the punchline: During Week 1, Rob Riggle, the comic-in-residence for Fox Sports' NFL on Fox pregame show, starred as Garoppolo in a clever takeoff of the Broadway musical du jour Hamilton. Watch the video and make your own diagnosis:

New England head coach Bill Belichick complimented Garoppolo in public: To say Belichick likes to play things close to the vest is like saying Hannibal Lecter has a slight eating disorder. The taciturn NFL coach uses the bare minimum of words during press conferences and has fewer expressions of emotions than Mr. Spock. That's why his postgame evaluation of a pass completion from Garoppolo to running back James White comes off as the wild ravings of a gushing fan to those familiar with his verbal style:

"That was a great throw and a great catch in really tight coverage."

Settle down, Bill! Get a hold of yourself, man!

Patriots fans can envision a future that doesn't include Tom Brady: And it's a future that doesn't resemble a post-apocalyptic Mad Max outback where the inhabitants speak like extras from The Departed ("I'm gonna die wicked hist-ah-ric on the Fury Rahd, yah chucklehead!"). What was once the Future That Dare Not Speak Its Name has now become the Eventuality That Doesn't Sound So Bad. Even sports columnists are daring to at least speculate about it in print.

Here's what John Tomase, a sportswriter for Boston's WEEI-FM, had to say about a changing of the guard at the quarterback position in a recent column:

"Jimmy G. won't take Brady's job this year. Barring injury, he won't take it next year, either. But suddenly the idea of the Patriots without No. 12 doesn't feel existentially terrifying. Suddenly it's possible to envision a Brady-less future that doesn't take place at the bottom of an abyss."

Sportswriters can spell Garrapolo Garappolo Garropolo Garoppolo correctly from memory: Well, they can do it most of the time.

Garoppolo could be repeating Brady's career trajectory: As most NFL fans know, Brady began as a 2000 sixth-round draft pick in the backup QB role for the Patriots behind starter Drew Bledsoe. But in the second game of the 2001 season, Brady replaced an injured Bledsoe—who had recently signed a $100 million contract extension with the team—under center and went on to lead the Pats to their first Super Bowl title.

RELATED: Patriots Backup QB Shows Off Hometown in 'Meet the Garoppolos' Video

Since then, Brady has racked up three more Super Bowl wins for New England, numerous league records and accolades, cameos in Ted 2 and the Entourage movie, a supermodel wife, and a seemingly superhuman supply of self-esteem that lets him star in commercials for Ugg boots, as well as pose for a men's magazine photo spreads wearing overalls and cradling a baby goat.

Oh, and he's also been involved in two NFL cheating controversies², the latest one getting Brady suspended by the league and giving sportscasters an excuse to use the words "balls" and "shrinkage" in the same sentence on air while stifling the giggles of their inner 9-year-old.³

Is Garoppolo using Brady's ascension to NFL royalty as the blueprint to build his own superstar pro career? Is it one more symptom that football fans are in the early throes of Garoppolo-phagia? Sports doctors will need more than a single regular season game to make a full diagnosis. But to take a line from the NFL on Fox Hamilton-Garoppolo mashup, "Turns out dreams come true when balls get deflated."

FOOTNOTES:

¹Does anyone remember The Famous Teddy Z, which ran for a single season on CBS from 1989 to '90? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

²Besides the aforementioned Deflategate, the Patriots also were involved in 2007's Spygate scandal. The team was accused of violating NFL rules by taping the New York Jets' coaching signals during a practice. The league fined the team and Belichick, and New England lost its first-round pick in the 2008 draft. Technically, Brady's only involvement in the scandal was being on the roster at the time. We're only mentioning it here to get a rise out of Patriots fans.

³On a related note, Deflategate also provided the wonderful Songify the News video of Brady singing "Those Balls Are Perfect."

Comedian Rob Riggle in Fox Sports' Jimmy Garoppolo-"Hamilton" parody from Week 1 of the NFL season. (YouTube screen shot via Fox Sports)

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