The Jimmy Garoppolo era didn’t end with the 49ers hoisting their sixth Lombardi Trophy. That combined with some of the on-field tumult throughout his 4.5 years in the Bay Area makes it easy to point out the negatives of his tenure. However, considering where the 49ers were when he arrived, the trade to acquire Garoppolo and the ensuing years that followed it have to be marked as a success.
A complicated 4.5 years renders useless the scale of success that starts and ends with a Super Bowl.
When Garoppolo made his first start for San Francisco in Week 13 of the 2017 season they were sitting at 1-10 with no real direction. His five consecutive wins kickstarted the 49ers’ rebuild. Suddenly they were playoff contenders going into 2018 instead of toiling in mediocrity as they searched for a franchise signal caller.
His 2018 campaign was cut short by a knee injury he sustained fighting for extra yards while trailing 38-24 late in the fourth quarter of a game against the Chiefs. Toughness in the face adversity became a theme for Garoppolo and the 49ers during his tenure.
San Francisco’s 4-12 finish that year highlighted just how important Garoppolo was to their success as long as CJ Beathard and Nick Mullens were going to be the backups. That became another theme that ultimately defined his time in red and gold.
The 2019 season is where things ultimately turned because the 49ers’ rebuild was virtually complete thanks to draft picks like George Kittle, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa. Their dominance that year and their run to the Super Bowl in Garoppolo’s first full season seemed to show the 5-0 run to close 2017 wasn’t a fluke.
However, that was the same year the cracks in the foundation began. His characteristically bad interception to end the first half against the Vikings in the divisional playoffs started a stretch of six quarters where he attempted only 14 passes. The idea that Garoppolo was a key cog in the team’s winning formula started to lose some of its luster then, and the shine really came off in the Super Bowl when the Garoppolo-led offense fell apart late and allowed the Chiefs to rattle off 21 unanswered points.
Those cracks turned into full-blown chasms in 2020 when two injuries limited Garoppolo to just six starts. He won half of them and didn’t play particularly well. A regression on top of another injury-riddled season officially pushed the 49ers to trade a pair of future first-round picks to move up and select Trey Lance No. 3 overall to eventually replace Garoppolo.
Had the Garoppolo era ended after 2020 it would’ve been difficult to assign him a ton of credit for where the team was going into 2021. However, the way he handled the Lance situation off the field while continuing to battle adversity on the field to quarterback the team in another NFC championship game while dealing with a shoulder sprain and torn UCL in his thumb that will require offseason surgery was undeniably impressive.
How much credit is assigned to him for that deep playoff run is up to the viewer. Some will give him all the credit as the starting QB of a team in the NFC championship game. Others will not give him any, saying he rode coattails of other great players. Ultimately it doesn’t matter.
The 49ers will enter 2022 in the conversation as contenders thanks in part to Garoppolo and what he did in the early days of his tenure. If Trey Lance hits the ground running, Garoppolo will earn some credit for that as well.
San Francisco never reached the NFL’s pinnacle under the guidance of Jimmy Garoppolo, but he’ll exit the Bay Area with the team in a much better place than it was in when he arrived. He may not have been a Pro Bowler or one of their best players, but the story of the 49ers’ rise from 2-14 in 2016 and 1-9 to begin 2017 to Super Bowl contenders cannot be accurately told without Garoppolo.
