How this Rockford coach forever changed Jimmy Garoppolo's football career

Doug Millsaps lay on the beach near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Thursday morning.

“Life is good,” the former Rockford Jefferson football coach said.

But Millsaps won’t relax long. He will fly to Los Angeles to watch his most famous former player in the NFC Championship Game against the Rams on Sunday. Millsaps is the coach who first moved the San Francisco 49ers’ Jimmy Garoppolo to quarterback.

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From linebacker to quarterback

Millsaps led Rolling Meadows to the playoffs nine times in 14 years after leaving Jefferson before the 1997 season. He also coached Jimmy's brothers Toney Jr., Billy and Mikey Garoppolo at Rolling Meadows. All of them played linebacker.

So did Jimmy G.

Until Millsaps played catch with him during a practice before his freshman season.

“Retention is important to me, so I would go down and play catch with all the freshmen before varsity practice, no matter what position they played,” Millsaps said. “I would ask them questions. ‘What position do you play? Why are you here? What’s important to you?’”

Millsaps had a different question after seeing the tight spirals and quick release by Jimmy G, a release that Millsaps says “is the second-quickest in the NFL” after Aaron Rodgers.

“Why are you wearing No. 29?” Millsaps asked.

“Because I’m a running back and linebacker,” Garoppolo responded.

“No, you are not. You are a quarterback,” Millsaps answered back.

“I don’t want to play quarterback,” Millsaps remembers Garoppolo as saying. “I’m a linebacker like my brothers.”

The two reached a compromise. Garoppolo would still play linebacker, but he was moved from running back to quarterback on offense. He had never played QB before on any level. Another player was the starter on that freshman team, but he got hurt.

“You are now the quarterback,” Millsaps said.

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Sort of. Garoppolo agreed — but only if he could still play linebacker.

Millsaps agreed to that, too.

Garoppolo started at linebacker on varsity as a sophomore. And then also took over at quarterback when the starter — Ben Sabal, who went to Drake as a tight end — got hurt.

“I told him, ‘You are going to take over this team,’" Millsaps said, "which is exactly what he did."

Success, but not much interest

Garoppolo led Rolling Meadows to the playoffs three straight years. But he didn’t get much interest from NCAA Division I programs. He wound up signing with Eastern Illinois, where he broke records set by former Dallas Cowboys star Tony Romo and former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.

Millsaps said former Rockford East linebacker Brock Spack wanted to bring Garoppolo to Illinois State. But ISU already was loaded at quarterback, with three who had played in games as freshmen that year.

“Brock told me, ‘I know I am going to regret this because he is going to come back to haunt us, but between us two Rockford guys I just can’t take him. There is a better spot for him somewhere else.’ I really appreciated that,” Millsaps said.

“You want to find the right spot, which he did at Eastern.”

Jimmy G's future

Garoppolo might not be in the right spot much longer. Jimmy G was once a sensation, leading San Francisco to five straight wins in his first five starts for a team that was 1-10 before he took over in 2017.

But that was a long time ago. And despite Garoppolo's 33-14 career record as a starter, including 4-1 in the playoffs and a Super Bowl berth in 2020, the 49ers traded three first-round draft picks and a third-rounder to pick Trey Lance out of North Dakota State at No. 3 overall in last year’s draft.

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Part of that was because Garoppolo has been oft-injured, missing 23 games in the previous three seasons. He is hurt again this year, playing through thumb and shoulder injuries. He has a 70.3 passer rating in his five career playoff games. It seems obvious San Francisco will turn to Lance at some point.

“They mortgaged their whole franchise for a guy who has played 15 games,” Millsaps said. “I am not going to question them. I will just sit back and watch Jimmy.

“He has the same mindset. It’s his team right now and he has them in a good position, no matter what people say.”

'How cool is that?'

And he’s a quarterback. Not a linebacker. Thanks to Doug Millsaps.

“He never wanted to play quarterback, not even in Pop Warner,” Millsaps said. “He was a running back and linebacker. That’s what he wanted to do. Until I talked him into it.

“We found a couple of quarterbacks that way, just playing catch with the freshmen.”

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Millsaps attends as many 49ers games as he can, including all but three this year. At this year’s 49ers win over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field, seven of his former assistant coaches at Rolling Meadows also came along.

“It’s really fun for me, not only to get to see their family, which are great, but I get to see a bunch of former players that played for me. One time we counted 89 players at a Bears game,” Millsaps said of Garoppolo’s first start with the 49ers in 2017. “How cool is that?”

Matt Trowbridge: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com; @matttrowbridge

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Former Rockford football coach first moved Jimmy Garoppolo to QB