Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo helped turn the San Francisco 49ers from a one-win team into an undefeated squad last season, and here’s why that trend will continue in 2018.
Few quarterbacks around the NFL have garnered as much attention heading into 2018 as the San Francisco 49ers’ Jimmy Garoppolo.
It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it. After all, Garoppolo still has just seven starts under his belt, including those five undefeated ones with the Niners last year that helped him become, for a brief time, the league’s highest-paid player after general manager John Lynch and Co. inked him to a five-year, $137.5 million deal this offseason.
With that, though, come expectations. Garoppolo is now expected to be the guy for San Francisco for a long, long time.
The question is whether Garoppolo can meet those expectation levels. Over his brief five-start stint last year, there were plenty of reasons to believe he could. Case in point, the offensive output the 49ers had both before and after Garoppolo was notably different, as shown by NFLAnalysis.net’s Chris Wilson:
#49ers with Garoppolo led the #NFL in points-per-drive, even though they had the highest FG-to-TD rate in the league. How? The Niners scored on an outlandish 62% of Garoppolo's drives. #GoNiners #49wz pic.twitter.com/jkZz4TD2tK
— Chris Wilson (@cgawilson) January 28, 2018
At the same time, however, there are some reasons to be concerned. Garoppolo did post a 7-to-5 touchdown-to-interception ratio last year, and there are remaining questions about his ability to deliver the deep ball.
Still, these worries — plus the fact he has just seven starts under his belt — don’t cast enough a shadow to convince many Garoppolo won’t deliver this season and beyond.
Simply put, the good outweighs the bad. And it’s not even that close.
Here are five reasons why Garoppolo both meets and exceeds the offseason hype in 2018.
Next Page: No. 5
