Jimmy Garoppolo taking over under center for the 49ers has generated plenty of discussion in football media circles.
After Trey Lance suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the 49ers’ 27-7 win over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, the 30-year-old now is QB1, and for some, he should have always been the starter.
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On Tuesday's episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” Simmons stated that with Garoppolo now the starting quarterback, San Francisco has a realistic shot at reaching Super Bowl LVII.
“They got Jimmy G there this amazingly they could have waived him,” Simmons said. “They look like the dumbest people on the planet if he wasn’t on the team if they had treated him like Seattle and from at least the short-term championship potential standpoint. I think they’re better off with Jimmy G. I feel bad for Lance, but I’m not sure he should have been starting.
“And the whole thing sucks, how it played out, but it made me wonder, like, all right, what are their Super Bowl odds? Where I wouldn’t have thought that before. I know that sounds callous, but I’m just thinking about it from, like, a Super Bowl ceiling standpoint. I think it’s higher with Jimmy.”
Simmons isn’t the only one that believes San Francisco has better odds of coming out of the NFC now that Garoppolo is the starter. A pair of anonymous 49ers players believe that the veteran quarterback gives them a better chance to win.
San Francisco 49ers
“Thirdly -- and this is the part no one wants to say publicly, but something several players and coaches enunciated privately in the wake of Sunday’s game -- the 49ers are a better team right now with Garoppolo at quarterback than they were with Lance,” Michael Silver of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote Sunday night.
“As two of these realists told me after the game, ‘I can’t say it, but you can.’”
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Garoppolo will have his first start of the 2022 NFL season when the 49ers face off against the Denver Broncos in prime time on Sunday night at Empower Field at Mile High.