Even as much of the fanbase turns on the veteran quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo still has San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan in his corner. Fair or not, much of the blame for this season's woes are being placed on Garoppolo. That comes with the territory of being an NFL quarterback, one of the most scrutinized positions in sports.
Shanahan joined KNBR this morning and was asked if he agrees with the idea that Garoppolo is not playing his best football this season, especially when compared to when he arrived in 2017 via a trade.
"No, I would totally disagree with that," Shanahan responded on the Murph & Mac show.
The coach says that Garoppolo started slowly in 2019, the season the team reached the Super Bowl, as the quarterback was coming off his ACL injury. However, Shanahan feels Garoppolo "really caught fire" about halfway through the season and started playing at an "extremely high level."
"I thought he struggled coming out of the gates last year," Shanahan continued. "And this year, I felt the opposite. I thought he played three well-played games, the first two games, especially versus Detroit. Philly, our whole offense got off to a slow start, but I thought Jimmy played well overall.
"And Green Bay, I thought it was his best game. He led us on a big comeback, made some huge plays in that game on third down. That gave us a chance to win it until Aaron [Rodgers] took that from us with those last two plays of the game. And then he was playing at a high level versus Seattle until he got injured."
Garoppolo missed the next game, a Week 5 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. He returned after the bye week against the Indianapolis Colts. Garoppolo was 16-of-27 passing for 181 yards, a touchdown, two interceptions, and two sacks in the 30-18 loss in a rain-soaked Levi's Stadium.
"And then he went out, and his first game back was in that rain game and had a rough game in that rain game," Shanahan said. "So, I'm going to see how bounces back this week, but to say that he's been playing bad all year, I would say is inaccurate."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Shanahan below.