Kurtenbach: One chart shows why Jimmy Garoppolo can never start again for the 49ers
There's bad, there's terrible, and then there's Jimmy Garoppolo in 2021.
At the beginning of the second quarter, facing a third and 3 from their own 32-yard line, 49ers rookie quarterback Trey Lance threw a first-down pass to Brandon Aiyuk.
In the process, he did something that Jimmy Garoppolo had been unable to do all year.
No, the completion to Aiyuk wasn’t unique, though I’d forgive you for thinking so.
Instead, it was the kind of throw Lance made — a laser-beam outside the numbers, into the bread-basket of the second-year receiver with a defender draped all over him.
It was a Big Time Throw. And that’s not me saying it, it’s NFL grading service Pro Football Focus.
The first-down connection to Aiyuk was one of two Big Time Throws (the actual name for the stat) that Lance made Sunday vs. Arizona, giving him two more than Garoppolo this season.
There’s another stat Pro Football Focus tracks for quarterbacks — turnover-worthy plays. Much like BTTs, it’s subjective, but the site is pretty conservative with praise, so I’m not concerned about false positives.
Lance had one TWP on Sunday — his first-quarter interception. There was no sugar-coating that one.
Garoppolo has seven this season. In fact, 5.3 percent of his snaps this season have resulted in a turnover-worthy play.
That’s the worst mark in the NFL, though rookie Trevor Lawrence is neck-and-neck with him.
Combine the two stats — big-time throws and turnover-worthy plays — on one chart and you have a matrix that defines what it takes to be a great quarterback in the modern NFL.
The rules have changed. The game has fundamentally changed as a result. The contrast between football in 2015 and today is stark, so forget the sport you knew in the 1900s. Add in the supreme talent level (aka size and speed) of skill-position players in this modern era and good quarterbacking can be broken down with a simple equation:
Risk vs. reward.
And when it comes to that, Garoppolo is in a league of his own.
Ben Baldwin, who works for The Athletic and is one of Twitters’ preeminent open-source data statisticians, made such a chart.
In the upper right corner are the quarterbacks that make big throws without risking turnovers: Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, and Kyler Murray.
The bottom right corner — the risk-takers quadrant — features Lamar Jackson, Jameis Winston, and Josh Allen.
This all checks out, right?
Then there are the “boring” quarterbacks in the upper left. They don’t risk much, but they also don’t threaten to turn the ball over. Think Carson Wentz, Kirk Cousins, and Teddy Bridgewater.
The bottom left quadrant has been simply labeled “bad”. These are the guys who are always threatening to turn the ball over and provide little upside for it. Rookies like Lawrence and Zach Wilson are in this quadrant. As are Ben Roethlisberger, Taylor Heineke, and Jared Goff.
And a mile away from all of those guys, including the woeful Goff, is Garoppolo.
The 49ers’ veteran is the only quarterback in the NFL with a big-time throw percentage of zero. This, plus his NFL-worst turnover-worthy play percentage.
He’s nearly off the map. All risk, no reward.
And this chart includes the stats from San Francisco’s Week 1 game vs. Detroit. Thank goodness, too — Baldwin would have needed to zoom out more if that game, where Garoppolo had zero turnover-worthy plays, per PFF, was not part of the data set.
I don’t know what Garoppolo fans are holding onto at the moment to justify him starting again. Organization at the line of scrimmage? Regardless, those intangible, unquantifiable things people are making up don’t matter, so long as this chart says he’s the worst quarterback in the NFL.
And make no mistake, it does.
The risk-reward chart doesn’t even factor in what a quarterback can do with his legs. Lance ran for 89 yards Sunday to be San Francisco’s leading rusher. Can Garoppolo do that?
Now, Lance hardly lit the world on fire on Sunday — he’s in the bad quadrant as well, though he’s encroaching on boring — but following this bye week, there’s no viable reason to go back to a quarterback with 35 more career starts whose play this year is in a class of its own futility.
The modern NFL is defined by the head coach and the quarterback. Yes, there are 52 other players and other coaches, but the best teams in the league have great quarterbacks and excellent head coaches.
The Niners have neither right now. Shanahan’s play-calling has lost its zeal against a league that is facing his kind of offense almost every week. (Three of the four teams in the NFC West, for instance, run a Shanahaneque outside-zone offensive scheme.) And the Niners’ quarterback is either a veteran who the whole league knows how to beat, leading to rookie mistakes, or an actual rookie.
At least the latter has upside.
Shanahan has an extra week to prepare for a huge game against the Colts on Oct. 24. He has an opportunity to change the course of this season.
And the data going into that game is clear — he cannot win with Garoppolo. Once upon a time, when everything was just right, he could. But that’s not the here and now and that’s all that matters when you’re trying to avoid a fourth-straight loss and a lost season.
Now, can Shanahan win with Lance?
Maybe.
The smart move would be to take the plunge — commit to Lance for the rest of the season — and find out what’s what.
The worst-case scenario is Lance is better prepared for next season — a make-or-break year for Shanahan in the Bay.
The best case is that the 49ers finally have someone who can lead them to victory, not just catch a ride.