The 49ers waited a long time to get Jimmy Garoppolo back into an NFL football game. On Monday night, that return was disappointing, to say the least.
Garoppolo – returning from a knee injury, surgery and a long rehab – started the exhibition game against the Broncos in Denver after sitting out the first preseason game. In a short stint, Garoppolo looked totally out of sync, completing just one of six passes (a short toss to a running back) and was intercepted once (and had another certain interception dropped). Under a heavy rush, he also had two passes tipped.
His quarterback rating for the evening? 0.00.
Though the 49ers won 24-15, Garoppolo’s struggles and the woes of the first-team offense in general should be troubling for a 49ers team that is pinning its hopes on the man they believe is their franchise quarterback.
“The whole offense didn’t really get going,” head coach Kyle Shanahan told the media after the game, according to Chris Biderman of the Sacramento Bee. “Any time you can’t get an offensive rhythm, everyone looks that way. We didn’t get anyone in rhythm. I wish we could have gotten him in rhythm.”
The shaky start comes off a recent practice in which Garoppolo threw interceptions on five straight passes.
Garoppolo attributed some of his problems Monday night to his long absence from playing. He was injured in Game 3 of 2018.
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“It’s something that I haven’t done in a year, obviously, so I’ve got to knock the rust off and everything,” he said. “Thankfully we have a short week this week so we can bounce back quickly, but it’s the first step getting back into it.”
As Conor Orr of Sports Illustrated’s Monday Morning Quarterback wrote Tuesday morning, the shaky performance can be especially troubling because Garoppolo is still an unknown quantity in many respects. He’s started just a handful of NFL games. Though he has an 8-2 record, it’s a small sample size. But Orr also warns that not much can be made of preseason performances.
Wrote Orr: “If nothing else, we can leave Monday’s game knowing that there is still so much we don’t know about an almost-28-year-old with 10 career starts. And, depending on what kind of person you are, that’s either fine, exciting or, yes, just a little bit concerning.”
The 49ers play their next exhibition Saturday in Kansas City against the Chiefs.
