It's not a stretch to say that, so far this season, Jimmy Garoppolo's play has been up and down. However, as head coach Kyle Shanahan will point out, the same can be said about the entire San Francisco 49ers offense. So, maybe singling out Garoppolo isn't exactly fair. Of course, he is the starting quarterback. Any criticisms will often fall directly on his shoulders.
The offense has gotten off to some slow starts this season. That was very apparent this past weekend as the 49ers dug themselves into an early 17-0 hole against the Green Bay Packers.
"It really just comes down to getting the play run the right way, I think," Garoppolo said before today's practice. "Just the little details with it. Even if [the opposing defense] shows us something we haven't really planned for as an offense, we still have to be able to execute it. There's a million little things that we've got to do, coaches, players. But at the end of the day, it's all of us working together."
If you're looking for a quarterback controversy, don't expect Shanahan to feed those discussions. The 49ers coach was asked what he looks for during the week from Lance to determine how much playing time the rookie quarterback will receive in games. He provided a straightforward and honest response.
"Trey's our backup quarterback. I mean, this isn't the preseason," Shanahan said. "We're not just going back and forth all the time. I mean, Trey goes in for specific plays or things we want to do. Trey, week in and week out, he gets better each week the more reps he gets on scout team and stuff like that. But there's not a big decision going into that each week.
"We put in a game plan for our starting quarterback. The backup needs to be able to do all that if [the starter] gets hurt. And what's cool about Trey, because of his different skillset, we always keep him alive with a couple of plays on situations."
Might switching quarterbacks in-game help the 49ers' issues with slow starts? The coach took the opportunity to make it clear that everyone knows Garoppolo is the starting quarterback.
"There's not a quarterback battle right now," Shanahan said. "I mean, we're going with our starting quarterback, who I think is playing very well. I'm happy that he is, so Trey is not thrown into any situation he has to do too early. If he ever is thrown into that, then I know Trey will deal with that, and he'll get better as he goes, but we have a luxury where we don't have to do that yet to Trey or to our team. Hopefully, we won't have to."
Shanahan added that if he felt the 49ers offense would benefit from throwing Lance on the field for more plays, then he would do so. San Francisco's final preseason game featured a heavy dose of Lance and Garoppolo playing tag-team quarterbacks. That led many to speculate that we might see something similar during the regular season. That hasn't been the case.
The coach feels he has been pretty honest in his discussions about Lance throughout the whole offseason.
"I think I was asked coming off the field of our third [preseason] game if we'd see this in the regular season," Shanahan said. "I said, 'Probably not.' I think a lot of words have been put in my mouth with some of that stuff or exaggerated pretty big. I pretty much keep it pretty real to everyone, but I don't just tell everyone the answer.
"I have no problem with you guys overdoing that and Detroit working on that extremely hard, but I've been pretty consistent with what I've said."