Garcia Sticks Around Again, To Sign With SaberCats
Adam Markowitz
Thursday November 8, 2012
The free agency frenzy has officially begun in the 2012 Arena Football League offseason, and the biggest name to change teams was announced on Thursday morning. Free agent QB Aaron Garcia announced on his Facebook page that he was going to be signing with the San Jose SaberCats. Multiple sources have confirmed to ArenaFan that that indeed is the case, bringing the California native back to his home to presumably finish out his AFL career.
On his Facebook page, Garcia stated the following, "I want to thank all of my friends and fans for your support year in and year out. I especially appreciate all of the shark nation and Jacksonville fans who have continued to want me back in Jville. I want to let everyone know at this time, however, that I have decided today to accept an offer from the San Jose Sabercats to be their QB in 2013. I am very happy to have this opportunity to play for such a great organization and try to help them get back to the top of the AFL where they belong. I am truly blessed to be able to do what I love here in Cali and still be actively involved in the daily lives of GiGi, Isabella, and Ant. G.I.A. for life."
Ironically, the man that Garcia is presumably going to be replacing is QB Mark Grieb, the only man that is even within 10,000 passing yards of his record of 55,004 yards. Garcia is currently eighth all-time in total passing yards in professional football history. He'll never catch the two CFL greats, QB Anthony Calvillo and QB Damon Allen, nor will he pass QB Brett Favre or QB Warren Moon, but 60,000 yards isn't out of the question for sure. He would need 4,996 yards this year to reach that mark, or an average of 277.6 yards per game.
Garcia needs just four touchdown passes to reach 1,200 for his career, and in all likelihood, no other quarterback will even sniff 1,000 again if Grieb doesn't come back to play this year. Assuming that both Grieb and QB John Dutton retire, the next closest active player is QB Nick Davila, who has just 332 career touchdown passes. There is a legitimate chance that Garcia could have almost half of the total passing touchdowns that all of the starting quarterbacks in the entire league have combined, depending upon how many return from last year.
Garcia has longed for the day that he could return to San Jose, as that is the closest team to his hometown of Sacramento, CA. This is going to be the eighth different city (seventh franchise) that Garcia has played at in his AFL career, and he is going to try to lead the SaberCats back to the ArenaBowl for the first time since losing the title game in 2008.
Garcia just turned 42 years old last week, though he won't be the oldest player to ever throw a touchdown pass in an AFL game. QB Todd Hammel earned that distinction when he threw his 442nd career TD for the Utah Blaze on July 22nd, 2011, which made him 44 years, 7 months, and 15 days old.
The move spurned the Jacksonville Sharks and the San Antonio Talons. Garcia had quarterbacked the Talons to a 14-4 record last season, but he was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round against Utah. Many in Jacksonville had hoped that Garcia would be back in the Sunshine State, but now, Head Coach Les Moss and company have to continue their search for a starting quarterback.
