The Las Vegas Raiders believe Jimmy Garoppolo is the right man at quarterback to help this team get over the hump and back into playoff contention. While he has earned a reputation as a game manager and someone who isn’t as talented as some of the top quarterbacks in the league, it is hard to argue with his overall results.
Over the last four seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, Garoppolo has amassed a 32-12 record. This includes going 13-3 and leading the 49ers to the Super Bowl back in 2019 and a 7-3 record last year despite expecting to be traded away before the season began.
Despite some of the shortcomings people tend to point out regarding him, Garoppolo simply produces wins when he is on the field, and it is something that fellow quarterback Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings believes he doesn’t get enough credit for, via Austin Boyd of Heavy.com:
“I kind of always scratch my head at the Jimmy Garoppolo situation in San Francisco, because I know how hard it is to win in this league,” Cousins said in a July 20 video for Netflix. “And it seems like every time he goes out there, they win. And then, they’re moving on from him or trying to draft somebody and trade up, and I’m thinking, ‘It’s pretty hard to win double-digit games in this league and that’s all they seem to do when the plays.’ So obviously I don’t know all that goes on there, but if he does it again with the Raiders, at some point, this guy’s just a winner.”
The main thing that regularly gets brought up regarding Garoppolo’s success in San Francisco is the infrastructure that surrounded him. The 49ers always had one of the best defenses in the NFL, an extremely strong run game which the offense was based around, and one of the best offensive minds in the league in head coach Kyle Shanahan.
But even with all of that, it is still up to Garoppolo to make those right reads and put the ball where it needs to be. Things were set up well for him, but he still had to execute, and he did that at a very high level.
But now all of that is gone, and he will look to replicate that success with the Raiders. As Cousins pointed out, if he leads this Raiders team to another winning record, no one will be able to argue that Garoppolo is a flat-out winner.
