Garoppolo gets into game, but S.F. falls.
Seahawks 24, 49ers 13: New quarterback makes much-anticipated debut with late TD pass in relief of injured Beathard; next step may be to start in Chicago Just do it: Hey, coach! Enough already! It’s time to tap Jimmy
SANTA CLARA >>
Kyle Shanahan never considered changing quarterbacks Sunday.
That’s what the 49ers head coach said after his team fell to 1-10 on the season by throwing away a winnable home game to the Seattle Seahawks because of an anemic offense, led by quarterback C.J. Beathard, and we have to take him at his word.
But if Shanahan really didn’t consider switching
from Beathard to Jimmy Garoppolo, then he had to be the only man, woman, or child at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday who didn’t have the thought cross their mind.
Beathard might be tough as nails, but Sunday’s game was another clear example that he is not the 49ers’ quarterback of the future or the present.
Enough is enough — it doesn’t matter if No. 10 is 100 percent ready, or if the offensive line is fully healthy, or if the locker room is fully behind a quarterback switch or not. It’s time for the Garoppolo era to start in earnest, starting next Sunday in the quarterback’s hometown of Chicago.
Because if Shanahan wants his tenure with the 49ers to eventually be defined by winning, he’s going to need to start winning winnable games. Winning, after
all, is a habit.
And playing your second-best quarterback against a rival team, effectively punting a game that had a one-score margin going into the fourth quarter, as the Niners did Sunday, isn’t a strategy to win.
(Don’t worry about the Niners’ draft pick, it’s going to be early no matter what the Niners do from here on out.)
When Garoppolo finally did play against the Seahawks — after Shanahan had his hand forced by injury, and well after the new quarterback could do anything to affect the outcome — he looked good. Really good.
And while it’s foolhardy to extrapolate 67 seconds of garbage time into anything substantial, no one can deny that Garoppolo’s two throws — the second a touchdown to Louis Murphy with time expiring (the Niners’ only touchdown of the day) — were impressive.
They were certainly impressive enough to make you wonder if Sunday’s
game would have looked different had Garoppolo played from the start.
Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson almost singlehandedly lifted Seattle to a win behind an offensive line that didn’t block, and without a viable running game to keep a defense honest — something he’s done seemingly all season, and for the last three years.
Wilson, after all, is a game changer and an annual MVP candidate.
Beathard, for all of his admirable qualities, is neither of those things, but I didn’t have to tell you that.
But Garoppolo, as we’ve been told by the 49ers since they traded a secondround pick to New England to acquire the freeagent-to be, could prove to be a game changer.
So, again, why wasn’t the latter one playing Sunday?
Don’t blame the offensive line — Wilson might play behind the only offensive line in football worse than the Niners’ and he still gets the job
done. And if it’s “unfair” or “risky” to play Garoppolo behind this fiveman front, which allowed 13 quarterback hits and three sacks Sunday, what does that make Beathard? A crash-test dummy?
And don’t say that Beathard earned a full game Sunday after beating the Giants last week — he might have earned a start, sure, but he didn’t earn second-half playing time by posting a 45.6 passer rating in the first two quarters of a 7-3 game.
And if it was because Garoppolo wasn’t ready to run Shanahan’s offense, what does that say about a player the 49ers are prepared to pay $20 millionplus next season? He’s been in a full immersion program in Santa Clara for a month — that’s about as long as a training camp. What does that say about Shanahan’s offense? It’s not too much for a rookie, but there’s no way he’d trust a fourth-year quarterback who came from New England and has had a month to prepare?
And why does Garoppolo need a full offense? Is the full depth of Shanahan’s playbook really being utilized these days? If so, it’s rather unremarkable — it mostly looks like a quarterback trying to scramble and make something happen with little success. (Unlike Wilson.)
We don’t know the root cause, because, again, Shanahan said he never even entertained the notion of switching quarterbacks Sunday. It was Beathard or bust for him.
It shouldn’t matter going forward, anyway — Shanahan can’t pretend that Garoppolo isn’t on his roster going into next week’s game.
Beathard has defied expectations to establish himself as an NFL-caliber quarterback this year. He’s as tough as any quarterback in the league and Shanahan has raved about his work ethic and attitude, and it wasn’t just lip service. Those are qualities that will keep him in this league for a long time.
But Beathard is not yet an NFL-caliber starter. He can be a culture setter for this 49ers team in years to come, but the only thing about Beathard that wows is how he continues to get up after hits.
Garoppolo has a wow factor — a bit of hope for the future in a generally hopeless season. We saw a glimmer of it Sunday. We should get four quarters of it next week, and the week after that, just to make sure it wasn’t a mirage.