Jimmy Garoppolo is the best 49ers QB since Steve Young
And it's almost weird that I have to say so.
As a 49er fan, I grew up blessed - I moved to the Bay Area in the summer of 1981, having just discovered football a few years earlier. Neighbor kids asked me who I liked and said, “It should be the Raiders. The 49ers suck.” Well, that season, the 49ers went all the way to the Super Bowl and won it, and I never looked back.
The guy behind center? Joe Montana, the greatest QB of all time until Tom Brady showed up. This is known.
Even before Montana moved on, the team was set with his replacement, Hall of Famer Steve Young, who is also clearly the 2nd QB on this list and for many teams would be a slam dunk best QB of the franchise.
What a ride that was. And to get back to the crux of this post, saying that Jimmy G is the 3rd best QB the franchise has had since 1981 is maybe less of a crazy take than it might sound. Because here are the only candidates for that:
Jeff Garcia
Alex Smith
Colin Kaepernick
Jimmy Garoppolo
Yes, that’s it. Plenty of other guys have lined up under center, usually for a handful of games, but this is the list.
And we can pretty quickly dispense with the middle two names. Alex Smith was, and is, a pretty remarkable guy and a very capable QB, but the 49ers ruined him. He changed offensive coordinators every year and was berated into being a checkdown artist. He just stopped throwing downfield, not because he couldn’t, but because he’d been taught to avoid making any mistakes. On behalf of the 49ers, we apologize, Alex.
And Colin Kaepernick, despite his playoff successes and ignoring all the social justice awareness he’s brought to light (and resulted in him getting blackballed by the league), just didn’t play long enough or have enough of a complete game to be in the discussion here. I remain a huge fan of Colin, and everything he does - and he played MUCH better than most skeptics want to believe (especially in the playoffs) - but he falls short of being the third best 49ers QB of my lifetime.
So, that brings us to Jeff Garcia and Jimmy Garoppolo, who I have just realized have the same initials. That’s sort of weird, right? Let’s move on.
We’re assuming that Jimmy is moving on (in fact, as I started writing this, he told the 49ers beat writers that his agent is working with the 49ers to find a trade target), so we can look at each QB as a 49er and make some assessments. Conveniently, they both played five seasons for the red and gold. Let’s take a look:
So, Jeff Garcia played in way more games, and even threw a higher percentage of TDs/start (about 1.6 to Jimmy’s 1.4). The volume is attributable mostly to the amount of games played. And certainly, availability is critical - it’s the main reason the 49ers traded up for Trey Lance and why Jimmy is looking for a new home just days after playing in the NFC Championship game.
But look a bit deeper - Jimmy’s record is WAY better. And remember, Garcia was throwing to Terrell Owens, handing the ball off to Garrison Hearst, and playing with a better than average defense for most of his time with the 49ers. And then when you look at the playoffs, it’s no comparison - Jimmy took the team to the Super Bowl and the NFCC. Notably, those were the only two full seasons he was healthy for.
Again, health is massive. And Jimmy is a limited skill QB - the NFCC showed a lot of why he was the right guy to be behind center AND why Trey Lance is the future. Jimmy doesn’t push it downfield much and rarely even attacks the sidelines. He has a congenital defect that turns ball-hawking linebackers invisible to him until he throws a pass directly at him.
But he’s also a leader. And I know that’s squishy, and hard to quantify but … I’ve literally been a fan of this team for over 40 years. I’ve never heard players gush over their QB like they do about Jimmy. Access is different now than it was back in the day, and I know the team loved and was shocked by the talents of Montana and Young, but man, it’s different with Jimmy G. Before he arrived, the 49ers franchise was a shambles. Collapsing after the Harbaugh era ended, the QB position was a broken Kaepernick, Blaine Gabbert, Brian Hoyer and C.J. Beathard. The culture was … not great, even after Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch were brought in. The team was reeling from Reuben Foster being YET ANOTHER bad dude on the team, getting into trouble with the law.
And then, Jimmy was traded to the 49ers on Halloween, 2017. I remember it well - my brother and I texted about it as I drove through the Marina in San Francisco. (Don’t text and drive. Be better than me.) And even before he started actually playing games for the team, things changed. (Oh, and he went 5-0 as a starter.) George Kittle may actually be in love with Jimmy, and I’m quite sure the feeling is mutual. The culture absolutely changed, and while it wasn’t obvious at first, a massive reason for that is Jimmy G. He deserves all the credit for that.
And this season, it mattered a LOT. Instead of pulling a Joe Flacco (or, in fairness, a Joe Montana looking at Steve Young), he embraced Trey Lance this season and the challenge of knowing he wasn’t part of the teams future plans. And he almost helped get the team to the Super Bowl. Again. And yes, I know that part of the reason they didn’t get there IS Jimmy G and his play on the field - which matters at least as much as what happens off the field - but I don’t think he gets nearly enough credit for the stuff most of us fans don’t see.
I don’t want to dredge up Jeff Garcia’s recent awful tweets against female sports writers, or his comments about Cam Newton needing to care less about fashion and more about football…but trust me, you’ll never see Jimmy doing things like that. And how he would have managed a diva like Terrell Owens is a great question, but Owens was publicly shaming Garcia when they were teammates. Not only would Owens likely not do that, but the rest of the team would solve that problem, stat, with Jimmy behind center. That’s also simply facts.
Part of me wonders if folks are predisposed to dislike Jimmy because he seemingly has it all. He’s a talented athlete, he’s preposterously good looking, and is incredibly decent as a human being. Look at how he treats the SF media and fans knowing he’s about to leave town:
I think it’s fairly clear - after the legendary Montana and Young, the dropoff is pretty severe. But when you look around, it’s not crazy to say that Jimmy was the 3rd best QB the franchise has had (again, in my lifetime. Apologies to all you John Brodie and Y.A. Tittle fans out there.)
Now…it’s time for Trey Lance to make some noise.