Million-Dollar Jimmy
Months after they traded for Garoppolo, the 49ers awarded the quarterback with a five-year, $137.5 million contract with an average of $27.5 million per year, making him, at the time, the highest paid player in NFL history.
Garoppolo was also instantly making $7 million more per year than the guy he had backed up in New England for three-and-a-half seasons, Mr. Tom Brady.
For San Francisco fans across the nation, it was an exciting time. A time they would have liked to last forever.
But for the rest of us, it’s time to come back down to planet earth and realistically examine the actual 49ers offense going into the 2018 season.
Garoppolo is a fine player. Nobody that has the opportunity to learn the craft of being an NFL quarterback under the wing of Brady and Belichick could not be a superlative athlete without the brains to match. He wouldn’t be on that team for almost four seasons.
But what’s important to recognize here is that Garoppolo will be leading San Francisco, and not the Patriots, into U.S. Bank Stadium on Sunday.
So the first thing that must be examined is how good he actually is. The truth is, he’s good, but let’s tap the brakes on the Hall of Fame jacket for now.
Taking a look at those five games the 49ers won to end the 2017 season, it’s easy to see that it just wasn’t that incredible of a magic show.
They started by beating the Chicago Bears (the league’s worst offense in 2017) by a point. In consecutive weeks San Francisco relied on last-minute drives to defeat the Tennessee Titans and the Houston Texans. Something to talk about, sure.
Victory number four, an impressive one, was against a cocky and aggressive Jacksonville Jaguars bunch where Garoppolo completed 70 percent of his passes and the 49ers won a shootout while also giving up nearly 500 yards in total offense to the Jaguars.
Win number five was in Week 17 against Los Angeles, where the Rams fielded their second and third-team players against San Francisco’s starters. Garoppolo threw two touchdowns and two interceptions in the game.
No doubt, these late-season 49ers wins were interesting. But as Vikings fans who once watched quarterback Sam Bradford lead the 2016 squad to 5-0 start, there shouldn’t be a ton of stock put in how San Francisco closed last season out.