Ryan Fitzpatrick, Washington’s temporary QB fix, has mastered the art of being an NFL nomad

In football this is called a “bridge,” or a “placeholder” and it must have been a sobering destiny to accept.

“You always want to be The Guy,” said his friend Gus Frerotte, the former Washington quarterback who had a similar career, playing for seven teams. “Then you go somewhere else and find you’re just one of 32 guys.”

Over the past 16 seasons, the 38-year-old Fitzpatrick has turned his reality into a kind of a football fable: the Bunyonlike quarterback from Harvard, with a gray speckled beard that spills off his chin like a furry waterfall, bouncing from team to team, dazzling each season with a run of long, gorgeous passes and a high-risk, high-reward style that has become known as “Fitzmagic.” Only then to disappear to the next city because in an NFL obsessed with the shiny new thing, Fitzmagic can never be permanent, and the fable demands that he move on again.

It’s a role for which he has been paid well, earning him more than $80 million over his career with another $13 million possible this season if the incentives are met on his one-year contract with Washington. But as much as it was never the dream to become this nomadic one percenter, he is doing something few other quarterbacks can: walk cold into new teams every year or two and play well enough to start and helm a high-powered offense.

On Monday, Fitzpatrick will start work with yet another team as Washington begins its offseason training activity program. As with all the places he has been, he will have to devour it fast, mastering it enough that he can be the team’s No. 1 quarterback at the start of this summer’s training camp.

“That’s not easy to do,” said Frerotte, who now runs the “Huddle Up With Gus” podcast. “You have five months to get to know the guys and try to be in sync with them. You have to learn new places and new coaches and learn the [offensive] system. And even if it’s a similar system to one you have been in before, the verbiage is different. You have to learn what everything means.

“But Fitzy is a smart, intelligent guy,” Frerotte continued. “He can handle it.”

Aside from all the jokes about a quarterback from Harvard and his reported 48 out of 50 on the Wonderlic test at the 2005 NFL draft combine, Fitzpatrick’s coaches have been amazed at how fast he absorbs offenses, quickly learning plays and concepts that can sometimes take other quarterbacks weeks, or longer, to master. For instance, Washington quarterback coach Ken Zampese, who was Cincinnati’s quarterback coach when Fitzpatrick was traded there in 2008, crammed two years worth of offensive study into one so Fitzpatrick could become the Bengals’ starter when Carson Palmer went down with injuries in 2009.

“He’s a guy you can give a lot to and it doesn’t slow him down,” Zampese said.

Given the transience of his career, few probably realize that only 29 NFL players have thrown for more yards than Fitzpatrick’s 34,977 or that he’s 35th all-time with 223 touchdown passes. His reputation is one of a gunslinger heaving throws with almost as much a chance of being intercepted as going for scores. But a lot of that was built while he was in his 20s and still learning to be an NFL quarterback. In recent years, despite maintaining his willingness to test defenses downfield, he has become more efficient, with better completion percentages and some of the lowest interception rates of his career.

It’s almost as if he has gotten so used to being everybody’s temporary fix that he’s become really good at dropping onto teams and fitting in perfectly.

Several times in recent seasons, especially the last two — spent with the Miami Dolphins — Fitzpatrick has said he’s playing better than ever, even as he draws precariously close to being 40 years old. At his introductory video conference in Washington last month, he said he had never been as sought after by teams than he was this offseason.

Fitzpatrick said the turning point of his career came in 2014, when he joined the Houston Texans and began working with then-coach Bill O’Brien and quarterback coach George Godsey.

“They helped me to see the game in a different way,” he said. “Since then I just feel like I’ve become a much better player” even adding “I feel like I’ve just gotten better every single year.”

Fitzpatrick came to Houston after a particularly unrewarding season in Tennessee where he started nine games, lost six of them and was cut the following spring. O’Brien was in his first season with the Texans and was installing a system that put heavy demands on the quarterback to read opposing defenses and quickly figure out the best matchup, regardless of what play had been called.

It was freedom Fitzpatrick hadn’t been given in his previous offense, and it appealed to his quick mind. He found receivers who weren’t the first options on plays and made sure to get them the ball when they were in the best situations.

“He was able to understand the system and use it to his benefit,” said Godsey, who also helped coach Fitzpatrick the past two years as Miami’s co-offensive coordinator.

Godsey added that wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins had his first 1,000-yard receiving season the year Fitzpatrick was with the Texans, noting that other Houston players thrived with Fitzpatrick throwing them the ball.

“Sometimes you just get with a coach who opens your eyes to different things,” Frerotte said.

Fitzpatrick, it seems, has taken things from almost every coach he’s had, incorporating nuances from each until his approach is filled with pieces from all his previous systems. The additions, he said at his news conference, are things he “has grown to like” from the other offenses.

Though Fitzpatrick was traded to the New York Jets following that season in Houston, it was soon clear that he was not the same quarterback he had been previously. Watching tape, Zampese immediately noticed Fitzpatrick was much more accurate than in the past. Two years later, when Fitzpatrick got to Tampa Bay, Buccaneers special teams coordinator Nate Kaczor — who had been in Tennessee when Fitzpatrick was there and is now Washington’s special teams coordinator — felt it too.

“He was the same guy, but you could definitely sense the improvement,” Kaczor said.

Rarely does Fitzpatrick appear to leave a place angry. A big part of Fitzmagic is how he seems so happy wherever he is, throwing up 300- and 400-yard passing games then knowing when it is time to gracefully exit. The most outwardly angry he has appeared is after his second season with the Jets in 2016, a dismal year during which he had more interceptions than touchdowns, was benched twice and recorded a 3-8 record as a starter.

But lots of players leave the Jets unhappy. Mostly, he has been understanding of the circumstances that drive teams to replace him with younger, fresher players. Except maybe last year in Miami. After leading the Dolphins to a 4-3 start, he was benched in favor of the team’s first-round pick, Tua Tagovailoa, mainly because Tagovailoa was the future, something Fitzpatrick could never be at 37.

He later told reporters he was “heartbroken,” mainly because it was the first time he had “felt fully committed and invested and felt like it was my team.” Though he later came back in to lead Miami to two late-season wins, his chance to lead the team to the postseason was lost.

“I think that one was hard on Ryan because he was playing pretty well and the team was going well, and then they just pulled it out from under him,” Frerotte said. “I think he wants to prove he can be a help to a team.”

Perhaps because Fitzpatrick has mostly played for teams in transition, he has never been on a playoff team. He has come close a few times, like last year, but Washington, with its strong defense and the offseason additions of wide receivers Curtis Samuel and Adam Humphries, might be his best chance yet.

When he was introduced in Washington, Fitzpatrick described the turbulence of his career, slipping from one team to another as “a new adventure, a new opportunity, a new journey” where he could get to “reinvent” himself. It’s a romantic notion if not for the fact he does this every couple of years, forcing him to uproot his wife and seven children. To Fitzpatrick, however, it’s almost a part of the Fitzmagic fable.

Another place, another start, another chance to build something lasting, now matter how temporary.

“How do you make that work? One of the main things is you’ve got to know your teammates,” Godsey said. “At some point he will make it work [with Washington’s receivers].”

Fitzpatrick, he suspects, will fit fine in Washington. There won’t be anything thrown at him that he hasn’t already seen.

“Think of how grizzled his eyes are,” he said.