Betting Jimmy Garoppolo and the 49ers vs. the Ear Pencil Of Power

I presume you’ll all be watching Lions-49ers on Sunday just to see how Detroit coach Matt Patricia’s Ear Pencil Of Power brings Jimmy Garoppolo to his knees. That is after all the easy lazy optic (if that’s not double redundancy) for Sunday’s home opener, and it has the added advantage of not reeking of desperation.
 
There is, after all, plenty of that in the new NFL, where going 0-1 means you could go 0-2 and then have to go into immediate rebuilding. Or, if you’re already there, tear down and start again, and again.
 
The 49ers and Lions are both 0-1, though the 49ers were less optically offensive than the Lions. In short, the 49ers lost to a superior team on the road while the Lions lost to an inferior team at home. It is why the opening betting line of 49ers-minus 3½ zoomed to 6 by Friday morning based on a flood of public money toward the Garoppolo.
 
But there is always value in distrusting the public in the new NFL, and a growing market in fading said public. There are apps you can buy that track the betting market for just such a contrarian strategy.
 
(As a side note, that strategy would have gotten you pounded in Week 1, as the money went 9-5-1, so the only true solution to winning at the NFL is to pass on every game).
 
All that said, this still looks like the kind of game in which Kyle Shanahan’s reputation for masterful schemes will be burnished at the expense of The Pencil and his aura of Belichick-hood. First-year coaches, who tend to work with bad teams anyway, get educated harshly at the start of their careers (as Shanahan fully knows from 2017), and the Lions have the added disadvantages of already having issues with Patricia’s practice regimens, and of course being the Lions.
 
In short, the 49ers look on their face to be the better team, injuries or no, one-dimensional offense or no, questions about Garoppolo or no. It may not be the way to bet, because six is a healthy number to cover for a team that is still climbing out of its own pit of despair, but if the 49ers are to be a credible operation this year, games like this should not be left to molder. It’s not must-win, but it surely is consider-the-alternative-if-you-don’t-win.
 
Many people (well, not many people if you take the entire population into account) love to extrapolate whole seasons out of Week 2, as in “since 2007, only 10 percent of 0-2 teams made the playoffs; since 1980, only 2 percent of 0-3 teams” blah blah blah.
 
It is, however, more important for the 49ers to show a greater coherence than they did against the disruptive Minnesota Vikings. San Francisco is a middle-of-the-pack team at their current state of development – ranging if they’ve done their jobs well, around 8-8 or maybe even 9-7. The Detroit Lions are the kind of team where wins may not be instructive, but losses surely are.
 
So if you need desperation, there it is – a roundabout way of saying the obvious. The 49ers are still at the impression-making stage of their development, and Sunday is an impression they need to make. The bettors have established that they still approve, if that’s a litmus test worth noting, but they will turn as quickly as regular citizens if The Pencil is as advertised.

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This Sunday, be sure to watch 49ers Pregame Live at 12 p.m. and 49ers Postgame Live immediately after the game on NBC Sports Bay Area and live streaming on the NBC Sports app. Greg Papa, Donte Whitner, Jeff Garcia, Matt Maiocco and Laura Britt will have everything you need to know from the 49ers’ home opener.