NFL Films producer and ESPN analyst Greg Cosell joined KNBR on Wednesday and was asked what fans and the media should think about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo's poor performance on Monday night against the Denver Broncos.
"He's obviously a bust after six throws," Cosell joked in response to the overreaction across the nation. "I think he should probably be cut tomorrow, and then you can just move on."
Garoppolo went 1-of-6 passing for zero yards with an interception in his first in-game snaps since tearing his ACL on September 23, 2018. Cosell went on to call Garoppolo's poor outing "totally irrelevant," and suggests that instead of just looking at the quarterback's six throws, he went back and looked at each of the signal-caller's snaps from 2018.
"I would be in the crowd that says those dropbacks actually have meaning, and the game the other night is totally irrelevant," Cosell said. "I'd be happy to tell you what I saw from his 130-some-odd dropbacks from a year ago [...] And I think he's got some work to do, quite honestly."
Cosell had the following thoughts on Garoppolo's 2018 snaps.
- There were a few too many snaps in which Garoppolo was impatient and indecisive in the pocket.
- There were times he did not allow routes to develop.
- Garoppolo needed to become more precise with his ball placement. Even some of his completions weren't as accurate as they could have been.
- There were times when Garoppolo needed to do a better job of quickly eliminating what wasn't developing during a play and identifying what was available to him.
"So I think these are areas in which he needs to improve, but I'm not surprised by any of this," Cosell continued. "This should not be alarming to anyone. Guys, he's started 10 NFL games. He hasn't started the equivalent of a full NFL season. What people respond to is the money that he got paid. I don't really care about that. I evaluate the player.
"When a guy has 10 starts in his career, there's a lot of work that needs to get done."
Cosell says Garoppolo has all the traits to be a very good quarterback, but he needs refinement from coaching and experience. Garoppolo has been getting the coaching portion, and now he just needs to receive more playing time. That development could have taken place last season if not for the injury.
Added Cosell, "As the season progressed, if he had gotten a chance to play, and get into rhythm, and work through the offense, and the game planning that Kyle Shanahan, in my view, is very good at, then who knows what would have happened?"
You can listen to the entire interview with Cosell below.