Jimmy Garoppolo’s biggest knock has been his limited sample size of seven starts. But oh man, the five of those he had with the San Francisco 49ers were the bricks of building a legend. So much his stock has him right now sitting at 11th for Pro Football Focus’ 2018 quarterback rankings.
Here’s what the folks at PFF said about the ranking:
It’s been a small sample, but Garoppolo has had an excellent start to his career, particularly an 86.6 overall grade that ranked fourth in the NFL last season. He had the highest percentage of positively-graded throws in 2017, despite ranking only 39th in big-time throw percentage. Garoppolo also did a fine job of taking care of the ball with the fifth-lowest percentage of turnover-worthy plays.
All jokes aside that this is not in the top-5, this actually sounds about where I’d put Jimmy Garoppolo. His sample size was a huge risk and still is. Once he can show what he can do with a full season under his belt (and hopefully without injury) I think he can be a top-5 quarterback in the league.
The only thing I’m worried about was Garoppolo’s amount of turnovers to finish 2017. While they can easily be attributed to someone working an offense they have no idea about, they are still concerning. Some of those picks were lucky catches by his wide receivers also. I do think with Garoppolo having a better grip of the offense in 2018 will make some of those throws go away as I think it was misplacing some anticipation.
The one thing I wonder about is who is ahead of him. Russell Wilson ranks 5th (surprise, surprise) and Andrew Luck, who hasn’t thrown a pass in all of 2017, comes in at 7th.
Garoppolo has a full season to maybe jump rankings. Given the 49ers wide receiver corps being upgraded and the changes to the offensive line, he’s got everything he needs to become one of the NFL’s elite and improve that ranking for 2019.