San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Looking back at five years with Garoppolo
Sunday being the fifth anniversary of the San Francisco 49ers’ acquisition of Jimmy Garoppolo, this seems like a great time to look back and remember those innocent days, when Jimmy G was new and the future was bright.
Let’s start by revisiting the Original Sin. No, not the trade for Garoppolo. That was a reasonable gamble, sending a second-rounder to the Patriots for a quarterback well-regarded by his genius coach, Bill Belichick.
The Original Sin was handing Garoppolo a five-year, $137.5 million contract (three years and $90 million guaranteed) after he started the final five games of that 2017 season and won ’em all.
This isn’t an exercise in second-guessing. After Garoppolo’s impressive 5-0 mop-up performance, virtually every expert who weighed in at the time liked Garoppolo, but agreed that the smart strategy for the 49ers was to franchisetag him for 2018. Garoppolo would have gotten a nice bag, and the 49ers would have had an entire season to evaluate his potential, without gambling away their future.
It’s not a horrible thing, being franchised. Among quarterbacks who have played while under a franchise tag: Dak Prescott (twice), Kirk Cousins, Drew Brees.
Garoppolo was injured in the third game of the 2018 season, so had he been playing under a franchise tag, the 49ers could have either let him go after that season, or franchised him again in 2019.
Let’s look at that dazzling 5-0 finish in 2017. The 49ers and Jimmy G:
• Beat the Bears 15-14. The Bears would finish 5-11.
• Beat the Texans 26-16. The Texans would finish 4-12.
• Beat the Titans 25-23. The Titans would finish 9-7, but they lost three of their last four games.
• Beat the Jaguars 44-33. Impressive. The Jags would finish 10-6. However, the Jags had clinched a playoff berth the previous week. And just as the Jags-49ers were getting under way at Levi’s, the Titans were minutes away from losing to the Rams in Tennessee, thus making the Jaguars champions of the AFC South.
So the Jaguars might have been lightly motivated. Still, Garoppolo passed for 242 yards and accounted for three touchdowns, including one on the ground.
“I knew he was making some plays (against the Jaguars) that just came very natural to him,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said the following February, when the 49ers signed Garoppolo to what was then the richest contract in football. “He showed that he had a natural feel that you can’t really coach. He was born with it.”
• Beat the Rams 34-13. Impressive, no? No. This was the Rams’ JV squad. The NFC West champions rested almost all their starters, including quarterback Jared Goff and running back Todd Gurley. Garoppolo outdueled Sean Mannion.
You can’t blame Shanahan and general manager John Lynch for falling in love with Garoppolo after that 5-0 finish. The coach and GM were rookies, and the team opened the season 0-9, after dumping Colin Kaepernick and going with Brian Hoyer at QB, then rookie C.J. Beathard.
Before the 2017 season, Lynch had inquired about Garoppolo but was turned down by Belichick. So when Belichick phoned Lynch in late October to offer the guy whom many considered to be Tom Brady’s successor, Garoppolo looked like the gold nugget shimmering in the mud at Sutter’s Mill.
Garoppolo did bring something important: hope. Before that 5-0 finish, Lynch and Shanahan were not exactly tearing up their rookie year. They had passed on Patrick Mahomes to draft Solomon Thomas, and wasted their other first-round pick on linebacker Reuben Foster, a ghastly blunder by Lynch, who ignored neon-red flags concerning Foster’s injury history and emotional instability.
The new fellas really needed a boost, and Garoppolo looked like a gift from the football gods. When a Beathard injury opened the door for Garoppolo to start those last five games, fate seemed to be smiling upon Lynch, Shanahan and the 49ers. But so far, not so.
Here’s a quick review of the quarterbacks Lynch and Shanahan have discarded, ignored, or whiffed on.
Kaepernick. They let him go, saying his style didn’t fit Shanahan’s system. That might have been a good call, since Shanahan has yet to prove he can coach a mobile quarterback.
DeShaun Watson. He went No. 12 to Houston in 2017 draft. Whew. That would have been a disaster, for off-field reasons.
Mahomes. His full brilliance was unknown at the time, but Shanahan scouted him and met with him, coming away super impressed. However, Shanahan had his heart set on ...
Cousins. Who almost surely would have signed with the 49ers in 2018, had Garoppolo not gone 5-0.
Josh Allen. The 49ers could have drafted him in 2018 by trading up two or more spots.
Aaron Rodgers. Swing and a miss.
Tom Brady. Yeah, LynchShanahan passed on what might have been an upgrade.
Cousins and Rodgers would have posed problems with their anti-vax beliefs and other odd and annoying baggage. Allen and Mahomes might not have blossomed as spectacularly with the 49ers (see: above comment about Shanahan and mobile quarterbacks).
The big picture is grim, but it’s only fair to Shanahan and Lynch to recognize that evaluating quarterbacks might be the biggest crapshoot in sports, and the dice are loaded with nitroglycerin.
Still, that Original Sin is a tough one to forgive.