Kurtenbach
Garoppolo must be better than ever for 49ers to get rolling
Let me be the first to welcome back Jimmy Garoppolo.
The 49ers simply must have
No. 10 under center for Sunday’s game against the Dolphins, which carries outsize importance for Week 5 because of
San Francisco’s inauspicious start to the season and hellacious schedule between
Weeks 6 and 13.
Week 4’s loss to the
Eagles made it clear that the Niners need Garoppolo. They cannot be expected to win with either Nick Mullens or C. J. Beathard at the helm of the offense. The fact that Beathard is now back in this conversation should tell you everything.
But the Niners also need Garoppolo to play the best football of his career.
No pressure or anything.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about how NFL teams can create sustained,
year-over-year success. The salary-cap structure of the league creates so many difficulties in retaining talent and the sport itself is so brutal. The NFL wants parity, and those two forces work to create it.
The only way to fight those forces — to be good forever — is to have a transcendent quarterback.
The teams that you can count on to be in the playoffs every year have quarterbacks you can count on to be MVP candidates, too. They’re fail-safes. When a roster isn’t as good as expected because of injury and bad (or unlucky) frontoffice decisions, the quarterback holds up the team.
I know 49ers fans hate Russell Wilson, but you have to respect the fact that he has taken his team to the playoffs in all but one year of his career, with Seattle winning nine games that season. In the last few seasons, the Seattle roster has been a hot mess. Doesn’t matter, Wilson picked up the slack, did some bonkers stuff, and the Seahawks made the playoffs. This year, Seattle’s roster seems coherent, and sure enough, they’re 4-0. We’ll see if that sticks, but Seattle is going to be in the tournament.
Garoppolo is no Wilson, but he does seem to win a bunch. San Francisco has won 75 percent of its games with him as their starting quarterback. As much as “Bad Jimmy” can do things to seemingly lose the 49ers games, there’s more than enough “Good Jimmy” to win games.
But as I wrote before the season, the Niners were going to experience attrition with the other 52 roster spots on game day. There was simply no way that San Francisco would have the best defense in the NFC and an efficient offensive power around Garoppolo again in 2020.
I underestimated how significant that attrition would be.
If I thought the Niners’ roster, on the whole, would take a step back in 2020 because of natural regression and roster construction, the first four games of this year have been more like a sprint away from the line of scrimmage. Injuries have decimated the Niners’ roster and while the team has held its head above water in the first few weeks, the full brunt of these injuries is likely to be felt in the weeks to come.
The defensive line simply has no juice. It’s competent, don’t get me wrong, but the entire defense is predicated on it being dominant. Average won’t do, but average is the best the 49ers can do right now. That’s what happens when you no longer have Nick Bosa, Solomon Thomas, and DeForest Buckner in the fold.
The secondary is decimated, too. Did you know who Ken Webster was? I didn’t know the fifthstringer until a day before he had to step in at cornerback.
Meanwhile, the offensive line — specifically the right side — can’t block anyone, wide receivers cannot separate, and the Niners keep using an excellent third-down back as an every-down back, leading to a rush attack that’s predictable and feeble.
It’s the quarterback’s unspoken responsibility to pick up all that slack. To make a flawed team look like a well-oiled machine.
That now falls on Garoppolo. For the first time since he took over as the starter in 2017 with a limited playbook and a whole lot of swagger, he’s being asked to elevate his game and his team, by proxy.
If he can pull it off — if he can make the 49ers look like a juggernaut again — he’ll earn himself a fat new contract and MVP consideration.
If he can’t? Well, I hear the quarterback class in the 2021 NFL Draft is pretty impressive.
And I’m only half-joking about that.