Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
BY J.A. SCHWARTZ
On February 2, 2020, Jimmy Garoppolo led his San Francisco 49ers into the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LIV in Miami leading the AFC Champion Kansas City Chiefs 20-10. During the first three quarters, Garoppolo was surgically accurate, completing 17 of 20 passes for 179 yards and a touchdown to help build their lead. Over the next fifteen minutes of game action, the Chiefs would rally to take a 24-20 lead, but Garoppolo had a chance to play the hero. On a third and 10 from near midfield with 1:40 remaining in the game, Emmanuel Sanders beat two Chiefs defenders deep, and was open at the five-yard line. Garoppolo had time to load up and throw, heaving the ball nearly 60 yards in the air, but his effort fell three yards beyond the grasp of his sprinting teammate.
Entering his fifth season with San Francisco, Jimmy Garoppolo can be expected to put up a fight to retain his position as the 49ers starting quarterback in spite of the team trading up to select Trey Lance of North Dakota State with the third pick in the NFL draft.
An accurate pass and subsequent catch by the open Sanders would have surely been a touchdown, and perhaps provided the team with the score that would have won them the game. San Francisco would go on to allow a late touchdown, and lost 31-20, failing to win their sixth Super Bowl title.
Those three yards may have been the turning point in what had been a nearly perfect career for Jimmy Garoppolo as a 49er.
The 49ers traded their 2nd round pick in 2018 (which would become Kerryon Johnson, RB for the Lions, who traded up to select him) to the Patriots to acquire Garoppolo on October 30, 2017. After he earned the starting quarterback job, he started five games for the Niners, winning them all. He completed 67% of his passes for 1560 yards, threw seven touchdowns, five interceptions and a QB rating of 96.2. His new organization was convinced they had found their quarterback of the future.
On February 8, 2018, the team signed Garoppolo to a five-year $137 million contract. He earned a $7 million signing bonus, and the contract guaranteed the 27-year-old star nearly $75 million. It appeared to be a perfect outcome for the 2014 second round selection who had finally gained an opportunity to guide a team after spending three full seasons as apprentice to Tom Brady in New England. Prior to his trade to the Niners, he had thrown a total of 94 passes in his three plus seasons as a backup, throwing five TDs without an interception, but had demonstrated the kind of ability that had made him a popular trade target around the NFL. San Francisco was thrilled to have been able to acquire a franchise caliber quarterback in his prime at the meager cost of a second round draft pick.
In his first full season Garoppolo and the 49ers lost two of their first three games. Late in Week 3, Garoppolo tore his left anterior cruciate ligament. He had reconstructive surgery ten days later on October 3rd, missing the rest of the season.
He had thrown five TDs against three interceptions, with a QB rating of 90. The team would flounder, finishing 4-12, using a combination of CJ Beathard and Nick Mullins to fill in for Garoppolo, neither of which posed a long-term threat to Garoppolo as the starter going into to 2019.
The 2019 season was a magical one for Garoppolo and San Francisco. The team went 13-3, winning the rugged NFC West. Garoppolo was brilliant, starting all 16 games, completing 69% of his passes for nearly 4000 yards, 27 TDS and 13 interceptions, with a QB rating of 102 (8th in the NFL). His offense scored 479 points, second in the NFL.
In the 2019 playoffs, he won two of the three games he played, completing 37 of 58 for 427 yards. He threw two TDs, and was intercepted three times, earning a 75.9 passer rating. The 49ers offense was largely built around a running game that opposing defenses could not contain, and he was not asked to win games with his arm. In the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, with the Chiefs rallying and ultimately taking the lead, Garoppolo was 3 for 11 for 36 yards and an interception.
Garoppolo has an impressive record of 22-8 since the start of the 2018 season, but injuries have caused him to miss a total of 23 games with the Niners going 6-17 in his absence.
Garoppolo’s 2020 season was marred by injury. He suffered a high ankle sprain in September, and missed all or part of the next several games. In a lost season for the team, which went 6-10, last in the NFC West, the defending NFC Champs were undone by inconsistent play at the quarterback position and a host of significant injuries to key players. Garoppolo finished the 2020 season with six starts, winning three of them. He completed 67% of his passes, threw 7 TDs and 5 interceptions, a 92.4 rate. His numbers were down across the board from his 2019 season, but still well above the league average for QB’s.
Garoppolo’s career passer rating is 98.9, which would be good for fifth all time if he had enough career attempts to qualify. He’s thrown almost 1,000 passes, completing 67.5%. He’s tossed 51 TDs and been picked 26 times. His adjusted average net yards per pass attempt, perhaps the most complete measure of a quarterback’s skill, is 7.00, which would place him tied for eighth all-time, just behind Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Tony Romo and tied with Dak Prescott. He turns 30 in November of 2021.
On March 26th, 2021, the 49ers traded their 2021 first round pick (twelfth overall), as well as their first round picks in 2022 and 2023, and included their third round selection in 2023 to acquire the third overall pick in this years draft from the Miami Dolphins.
The following month the Niners drafted quarterback Trey Lance of North Dakota State with that third overall pick, the highest pick the 49ers have used on a quarterback since Alex Smith went #1 overall in 2005.
Trey Lance parlayed his only full season at North Dakota State into becoming the third pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. In 16 games during the 2019 season he completed nearly 67% of his passes for 28 touchdowns without an interception.
February 2, 2020 to March 26, 2021. Exactly 418 days elapsed between Garoppolo’s play as the starting quarterback in Super Bowl LIV and the 49ers decision to acquire the third pick in the 2021 draft via a blockbuster trade with Miami. During that period, the front office executives for the 49ers changed their minds about the ability of Jimmy Garoppolo to be the face of the franchise and lead them to a Super Bowl title.
The San Francisco brain trust must’ve decided that they could improve upon the productivity they were getting from their signal-calling group sometime after the 2020 season. If they cut Garoppolo, they would only incur a $2.8 million cap hit for 2021, saving nearly $22 million of precious salary cap dollars in the process. Perhaps that factors into the equation about their quarterback situation, but franchises don’t invest as much draft capital in a high draft pick without intending for that player to be dramatically impactful.
Some relevant history when it comes to quarterbacks selected with early first round picks:
Between 2011 and 2020, 14 quarterbacks were selected within the first five selections of the first round.
Nine of those players were anointed starters by Week 1 of their rookie seasons.
Eleven of the 14 started at least ten games in their first year after the NFL draft.
Only a handful of those quarterbacks referenced were drafted following a trade that involved quite as much future value as the 49ers surrendered to move up to the #3 spot in this year’s draft. History suggests that Trey Lance is likely to be christened as the 49ers starting quarterback sooner rather than later, leaving the status of the most recent franchise savior, Jimmy Garoppolo, very much in doubt.
Just two years ago Garoppolo led the 49ers to a 13-3 record while throwing for nearly 4,000 yards and completing 69.1 percent of his passes on the way to the Super Bowl following the 2019 season.
Head Coach Kyle Shanahan hinted in mid-June that the starting quarterback job is an open competition. “I definitely see it as Jimmy’s the starter. But if Trey is ready to compete, I have no problem with it.” He would go on to further clarify his position by noting “I don’t sit there and say ‘Hey, we’re not playing a rookie quarterback…we have to rest him the first year,’ I don’t make any decisions like that until I have an opinion on it. If he comes in and he’s playing at a high level and we think he gives us the best chance to win, we wouldn’t hesitate to do that (start him in Week 1).”
Trey Lance was considered the best quarterback prospect coming out of the Minnesota high school class of 2018, but only the 127th best QB nationally. He wasn’t recruited by the major CFB conferences, and went to Football Conference Subdivision (FCS) powerhouse North Dakota State in order to be able to play quarterback. The Eagles had drafted former North Dakota State QB Carson Wentz with the #2 overall selection in the 2016 draft, creating a pathway for a smaller school quarterback to become a high profile selection. After redshirting in 2018, he took over the reigns as the starter under center, and was MVP of the 2019 Division 1 Football Championship as his Bisons won the national championship in that division.
He put up video game numbers: 192 completions in 287 attempts (67% completion rate), with 28 TDs and ZERO interceptions (an NCAA record for most attempts without an interception), for a 180.6 rating. Though he lacked enough college completions to qualify for the all time rating leader board, that rate would be fourth best all-time, behind Tua Tagovialoa, Mac Jones and Kyler Murray. He also ran for 14 TDs, amassing 1100 yards on the ground at a 6.5 yards per carry clip. In addition to his championship game MVP Award, he also won the Walter Payton Award as the FCS’s best offensive talent, and the Jerry Rice Award, given to the division’s best freshman performer.
Lance only played a single game in 2020, a season-opening victory over Central Arkansas that would see him throw his only collegiate interception. After the game, he opted out of the remainder of the pandemic delayed season during which his teammates would advance to the quarterfinals of the 2020 FCS playoffs before losing to Sam Houston State in May 2021-a completion of the postponed 2020 fall season.
The mobile Lance also rushed for 1,100 yards in 2019, averaging 6.5 yards par carry on the way to 14 touchdowns on the ground.
Lance threw a total of 318 passes during his college career. It would appear to be a remarkably small sample on which to base a franchise altering assessment, but Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers front office appear supremely confident that they’ve chosen the right man to be the next great San Francisco quarterback, a legacy that includes Hall Of Famers Y.A. Tittle, Joe Montana and Steve Young. The team’s decision to invest so much draft value to trade up to the third overall selection in the April 2021 draft would seem to suggest that they coveted an upgrade at the quarterback position to a remarkably significant extent, and it certainly casts doubt as to the confidence the team has in Garoppolo.
On Wednesday the Niners announced they had signed Lance to a fully guaranteed four-year $34.1M contract, slightly less than the $36.8M agreed to by the Jacksonville Jaguars and top pick Trevor Lawrence. Fellow quarterback Zach Wilson of BYU, who was chosen second by the Jets, remains unsigned. Head coach Kyle Shanahan had stressed the importance of having Lance signed when the team opens camp. “We’ve never had a holdout since we’ve been here. It always seems to go down to the wire. It’s important that he is here.”
Prior to Lance’s signing, Shanahan pointedly described his incumbent quarterback as “…The best quarterback in the building right now.” When pressed to describe the quarterback situation, Shanahan was direct: “…There’s no open competition right now. Jimmy’s coming in as the one and Trey’s coming in as the two.”
The specter of that decision will likely hang over the team’s training camp-which opens today-until the season begins on September 12th in Detroit.
