49ers officially have a Jimmy Garoppolo problem

alot of talking heads jumping off the “Jimmy G Bandwagon” as fast as they were jumping on. Could b a long season for the 9’ers! Not that I’m complaining!


[touchdownwire.usatoday.com]

49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was returning from a torn ACL that cost him the last 13 games of the 2018 season. He was working with a shuffled offensive line. He was going against a formidable Broncos defense. He was rusty. This was going to take some time.

All these things are true, and yet … Garoppolo’s return to the field for the first time since Week 3 of the 2018 season couldn’t have been much worse. Garoppolo completed one of six passes for zero yards, one interception and a passer rating of (cue Dean Wormer voice) zero-point-zero in what turned out to be a 24-15 win over Denver.

Not that the score mattered nearly as much as Garoppolo’s numbers — both statistical and contractual.

More could legitimately be expected from a guy who the 49ers signed to a five-year, $137.5 million deal after trading a 2018 second-round pick to the Patriots for his services in October 2017. In nine games and eight starts over two seasons with the 49ers, Garoppolo has completed 64.8% of his passes, thrown 12 for touchdowns and given eight interceptions away. Tape study shows a quarterback who still has issues with reading the entire field, and whose explosive plays come from random chance as much as they do from intelligent design. You may remember the three-pick game against the Vikings in Week 1 of the 2018 season; Garoppolo failed to test Minnesota’s coverage and lost potential completions when he didn’t time up with his receivers against Mike Zimmer’s relatively simple (yet brilliantly executed) coverages.

The preseason game against the Broncos was far from intelligent design. Garoppolo’s first pass was tipped at the line of scrimmage. His second pass was picked off by cornerback Isaac Yiadom, exacerbated by a backside pressure from Denver edge rusher Bradley Chubb. Garoppolo was throwing blind and flatfooted here, and his footwork was far from optimal on most of his throws.

After the game, head coach Kyle Shanahan tried to pump the brakes on any panic, outlining what happens to a quarterback who’s been out of action for nearly a full season.

“For a quarterback more than anything, your rhythm is off,” Shanahan said. “You need to be in there a lot of snaps where you can feel the rush and you have the timing and speed of the game with the coverages, with the receivers. You can simulate that only in practices, but you’re still never going to allow anyone to hit you. It’s just getting back there and getting comfortable. Some guys don’t come back from it as well.

“Jimmy’s been great. He’s come back and he hasn’t had any setbacks and he’s good to go. But Jimmy hasn’t played a lot of football this last year, so it’s about getting him reps and putting him in different situations and letting him play as much as possible, but you can’t keep all your other guys out there as much as possible too, so we’re having to deal with that as we go and have him ready for Week 1.”

Shanahan doubled down in defense of his quarterback on Tuesday, pointing to protection issues.

“I mean, you always want to play better. But, to get concerned over 10 plays or however many it was, that’s pretty irresponsible. You try to evaluate those 10 plays. The one thing that I saw differently once I watched the tape was the interception. It wasn’t a TE (tackle-end stunt). We got miscommunication in protection, so some guys came in there so the D-End, what’s his name, Chubb, got in there early, earlier than expected. I thought Jimmy got hit as he was throwing it, he didn’t. He got rid of it too early to avoid the hit and the route hadn’t developed yet, so it didn’t go far enough down the field. We need to do a better job in protection there by getting everyone on the same page and we need to do better at throwing that ball away, or if you can’t, you have to take that sack.”

If Garoppolo has been the quarterback the 49ers expected before his injury — the one they gave all that money to — Shanahan’s comments would hold a bit more weight. But through his career, Garoppolo has been bolstered by the promise of potential more than he’s been handed the weight of expectation. Before, he was Tom Brady’s backup, or the new guy in San Francisco who needed time to learn the offense, or the guy who was supposedly just getting the hang of things before he was lost for the season.

Now, Garoppolo is the guy who needs to prove it. And for that to happen, he’ll need to bring a lot more to the field than he did on Monday night.

If he can’t, what then? The 49ers gave Garoppolo a ton of money, but they did most of it up front — he was on the books for a massive $37 million cap hit in 2018, and he takes up $19.35 million in 2019. The hits after that are still severe — $26.6 million in 2020, $26.9 million in 2021 and $27 million in 2022 — but the price to cut and run decreases significantly.

In 2020 and beyond, per OverTheCap.com, if the 49ers were to release Garoppolo as a post-June 1 cut, he’d represent just $1.4 million in any of those years in dead cap space, and the cap savings accelerate from $25.2 million in 2020, to $25.5 million in 2021, to $25.6 million in 2022. And $15.7 million of Garoppolo’s $23.8 million base salary is guaranteed for 2020 if he’s on the roster April 1.

We’re not to that point yet; the 49ers obviously believe Garoppolo to be their franchise quarterback, and they’ll give him every opportunity to succeed. But if it doesn’t work out, the cost becomes prohibitive over the next few years, while the benefits of moving on from a mistake are evident.

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BeachBoy