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The national media has a funny habit of over-simplifying complicated topics.
Most of the time, they do so as to create overarching segment questions — Is Russell Wilson the MVP? Are the Seahawks Super Bowl contenders? Were the 49ers exposed? — but on Tuesday, it seemed that commentators at ESPN, Fox, and NBC decided to play the blame game.
They claimed Jimmy Garoppolo lost Monday night’s game for the 49ers.
The way they explained it, Wilson made the plays to win the game for Seattle. Pay no mind to the fact that he nearly threw it away on the first possession of overtime.
And Garoppolo? He went 3-and-out when the Niners had the ball with 1:50 remaining in OT, setting up the Seahawks’ game-winning field goal. Never mind the fact that he drove the Niners down the field to send the game to overtime, or that the overtime 3-and-out that flipped the game featured two outstanding, tip-your-hat defensive plays and a bad drop by Dante Pettis.
In simpler terms: if the quarterback is good, the team’s good.
If the quarterback is bad, the team is bad.
Oh, and there’s no in-between, no nuance — you’re either good or bad.
It’s utter nonsense.
The national media frames complicated subjects like success in football — the complexity of which we saw in full bloom Monday night — because they think the general public cannot handle a real conversation about it.
I’ve been in those meetings. You won’t believe how condescending they are to the common consumer.
The people only want stars, they think, so they frame everything through that lens. And quarterbacks are the stars of a football team, whether they like it or not.
Maybe I’m the moron here, but the way I see it, the 49ers don’t need Garoppolo to be great for them to be a great team.
In fact, it says more about the 49ers’ prospects that they don’t need Garoppolo to be transcendent to win games.
Think about it: The Seahawks need Wilson to be Houdini every game — he is their team. It’s a dangerous way to live, but luckily he’s one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game, so they’re 8-2.
But the 49ers? They have more than enough pieces around Garoppolo to be successful if he is just merely competent.
He was neither great nor terrible Monday — he made some plays and screwed a few plays up. In short, he was the Jimmy Garoppolo we’ve seen nearly every week of his 49ers career.
I don’t think the banged-up Niners had enough pieces around him.
Remember: only twice in the 49ers’ first nine games has the team needed him to step up and win them a game — Oct. 31 against the Cardinals and Monday night.
He won that first game — he was absolutely fantastic against Arizona.
And despite being “afraid to make a play” (that courtesy of ESPN’s Marcus Spears), he nearly won the second game, despite an offensive line that was trying to get him killed, a run game that couldn’t do a thing, and being left with the no-hands club at wide receiver after injuries knocked out his top two — perhaps three — options at the position.
It’s not a sin to not be an all-time great.
And a 50 percent hit rate? That’s pretty good for a quarterback with three fewer starts than Baker Mayfield and only three more starts than Lamar Jackson. And while QB wins are an overrated stat, he is 14-3 as the starting quarterback of the 49ers. C.J. Beathard isn’t doing that.
Garoppolo is good. He’s just not great. He might get there someday, but honestly, the 49ers don’t need him to reach that point.
I found it curious that Garoppolo was never discussed as even a darkhorse MVP candidate over the last nine weeks. After all, the award is seemingly only given to quarterbacks now, and he was the quarterback of the last undefeated team in the NFL.
Best I can tell, it’s because Garoppolo is seen nationally as a system quarterback. He doesn’t get credit for success — the system does.
But failure — that’s apparently on him.
That’s ok, though. Systems win Super Bowls.
And the last NFL MVP to win the Super Bowl was Kurt Warner in 1999.
That’s because the award effectively goes to the guy who lifted his team most (like Wilson) or has a record-setting season. But feeble teams that need to be lifted time and time again don’t win titles and records are usually built on the back of performances against bad teams — the likes of which you don’t see in the playoffs.
Don’t get me wrong: The 49ers still have plenty to prove and Garoppolo still plenty to improve as a quarterback. This might not be their year. That year might never come. But Monday’s loss was a team effort, though and through.
Just as success is.
And anyone who tells you something different is simply trying to get one over on you.
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