Nice start, but next Montana? Take a breath
Yes, he’s Italian. Yes, he has an accurate arm. Yes, he has a nice smile and sort of skinny legs and a cool demeanor.
But can we stop comparing Jimmy Garoppolo to Joe Montana after just one start in a 49ers uniform?
“We are both Italian,” Garoppolo said this week, with a chuckle. “So we have that in common.
“The Joe Montana comparison — I think it’s a little early for (that). It’s only been one game.”
Garoppolo is too young to remember Montana playing. He was just 13 months old when Montana played his final game in a 49ers uniform, a rainy night at Candlestick Park against Detroit on Dec. 28, 1992, that was Montana’s only game
between the 49ers’ NFC Championship Game after the 1990 season and his first game with Kansas City in 1993.
Still, Garoppolo knows those are dangerously large cleats to be fitted for after only three career starts. It makes carrying Tom Brady’s clipboard seem like a relaxing stroll through the Canton bronze bust room in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Yet we keep hearing it. We heard it when Garoppolo — he’s Italian! — was acquired. When he came into the Seattle game in the final moments and threw a touchdown pass. By the time he started against Chicago and won the game, the comparison was a low roar and it’s continuing to build before his next start in Houston.
Talk radio has been gushing. Social media has been swooning (and I’d like to point out that most of the gushing and swooning is coming from male 49ers fans). “Like Montana,” has been said frequently in the past two weeks, followed closely by “Like Brady.”
On Sunday, CBS even had the nerve to compare a failed touchdown pass intended for George Kittle to “The Catch.” After Garoppolo sprinted right and threw to the back of the end zone, CBS replayed Montana to Dwight Clark as though it was a completely logical comparison.
This is what happens when the bar for a once-top-of-theline franchise is set so low, when expectations and hopes have been obliterated through years of mismanagement, third-tier options and embarrassing quarterback play.
Your expectations get all out of whack. Your sense of reality suffers.
At least both head coach Kyle Shanahan and Garoppolo seem to have their heads rooted firmly in the here and now, and not in Hall of Fame comparisons.
“I love that excitement and I think it’s deserving — you should be excited that we have a talented guy,” Shanahan said of the growing buzz among fans. “But you also want to be fair to Jimmy, too. You said the words Joe Montana. That was (Garoppolo’s) third NFL game, really playing.
“That’s the goal and we’re excited about him. Hopefully, someday we can get to there. But let’s take it one game at a time.”
Garoppolo — like a good Bill Belichick disciple — isn’t hearing the noise surrounding him.
“I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that my whole career,” he said. “I try not to listen to any of the outside stuff.”
He goes to work and to his apartment. That’s it. He won’t see any of the area — Brady reportedly has filled him in on cool Bay Area places to go — until the offseason.
Tunnel vision is a good thing when people are ready to compare you to the two greatest quarterbacks to play the game.
But his teammates are excited, as their response and praise after the Chicago game showed. Some have said it feels like the season is just starting. They love his demeanor, his work ethic. In the 49ers’ locker room this week, when someone said something about “Jimmy G,” a teammate called out, “G for gunslinger!”
Garoppolo’s arrival and obvious talent is only a good thing. It appears the 49ers have solved the biggest, most pressing issue that any NFL team faces. And now they have four more games and an entire offseason to attack the other needs, of which there are many.
Being a solution does not automatically make one a legend.
Shanahan was asked if he has to temper his own expectations.
“When a quarterback goes out there and has some success, I think it’s pretty obvious for everyone to see his arm talent, just how quick he can get rid of it, the quick twitch he has in his arms and his legs, the zip he can put on a ball,” Shanahan said. “People get very excited. I think everyone knows the potential and the possibilities. It’s not that you have to temper, you just have to be realistic. It was one game.”
And it was one very nice game. Not great (except to those who have been suffering from bottom-of-your-boot expectations), but good. No touchdowns. Frustration in the red zone. One interception. Two sacks.
But it was a win. And a promise.
And a comparison that, hopefully, won’t become a burden.