With a couple flaps of a butterfly’s wings, Jimmy Garoppolo might already be in the select group of quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl rings on their right hand.
Now another unexpected twist of fate has him positioned to take another shot at hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for the first time.
Garoppolo’s chances of earning a third shot at directing the San Francisco 49ers to a championship seemed to evaporate last spring, when the 49ers handed the reins to 2021 first-round pick Trey Lance and tried trading Garoppolo before he underwent shoulder surgery.
But the season-ending ankle injury Lance suffered Sunday has given Garoppolo — still only 30 and in just his fifth full season with the 49ers, who acquired him from the New England Patriots after Bill Belichick might or might not have been forced to trade him because team owner Robert Kraft wouldn’t allow him to move on from Tom Brady, who went on to direct the Patriots to two more Super Bowls and one championship following the Garoppolo deal — has a third shot at the title that eluded the 49ers in 2019 and 2021.
The 49ers squandered a 10-point fourth quarter lead in both Super Bowl 54, which they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs 31-20, and in January’s NFC Championship Game, which the eventual Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams won 20-17.
Lance will almost surely get another chance next season and his two-way upside is more in line with a modern franchise quarterback. But the unspectacularly solid Garoppolo — who already has a chemistry with All-Pros Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, the 49ers’ top two offensive playmakers —might be a better fit for San Francisco’s short-term hopes.
The 49ers’ odds of winning the Super Bowl are +1800 at DraftKings and +2000 at BetMGM, down from the +1600 odds they had via DraftKings during training camp. The current odds are the fifth-best in the NFC but leave San Francisco behind a quartet of contenders with plenty of question marks.
Will Brady’s midlife crisis derail the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+800 at DraftKings, +700 at BetMGM)? Is Jalen Hurts the top-tier quarterback the Philadelphia Eagles (+1000 at DraftKings, +1100 at BetMGM) need to return to the Super Bowl? Even if he finds someone to replace Davante Adams, will Aaron Rodgers (+1200 at DraftKings and BetMGM) and the Green Bay Packers sputter again in the playoffs? And did the defending champion Rams (+1600 at DraftKings and BetMGM) win their title just as the window shut on a win-now team in salary cap hell?
There’s definitely a path for Garoppolo to become the latest caretaker mid-season replacement quarterback to guide an otherwise championship-ready team deep into the playoffs or all the way to the promised land. Can he join this club of signal-callers?
7. Shaun King, 1999 Buccaneers
Trent Dilfer (more on him shortly) seemed primed to be the just-don’t-mess-up caretaker the Buccaneers needed to make the Super Bowl behind an all-time great defense, but Dilfer’s broken clavicle in week 12 forced King into action. King helped the Buccaneers to a 4-1 record down the stretch and a win over Washington in the NFC Divisional round before nearly becoming the first rookie quarterback to lead a team to the Super Bowl, with only the most inexplicable overturn of all-time costing the Buccaneers a chance at driving for the game-winning touchdown in their 11-6 NFC Championship Game loss to the St. Louis Rams.
23 years ago during the 1999 NFC Championship Game, I caught a 13 yard pass from @realshaunking with 47 seconds left. Little did I know, this would eventually become one of the most controversial plays in NFL history and lead to the creation of The Bert Emanuel Rule! #ItwasaCatch pic.twitter.com/1d0zFSEwIV
— TheBertEmanuelRule (@BertEmanuelSr) January 21, 2022
6. Vinny Testaverde, 1998 New York Jets
The Jets have had 22 different week 1 quarterbacks in the post-Joe Namath era — none as random as Glenn Foley, who lost all three of his starts before Testaverde had the best run of his career and led the Jets to 11 wins in their final 12 regular season games. The Jets then routed Jacksonville in the AFC Divisional round and had a 10-point lead on the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game before everything fell apart and the Broncos rolled to a 23-10 win. Another stop or two against the Broncos up 10 and the Jets are almost surely only going on 24 years since their last title.
5. Trent Dilfer, 2000 Baltimore Ravens
Dilfer lost his job to King but got the last laugh by landing with the Ravens, who needed…a just-don’t-mess-it-up caretaker to make the Super Bowl behind an all-time great defense. Tony Banks was benched after the Ravens went without a touchdown in back-to-back games Oct. 15-22, 2000. Dilfer didn’t direct a touchdown drive in his first start, a 9-6 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, but did just enough not to mess it up over the final 11 games, all of which the Ravens won on their way to the first Super Bowl title in franchise history. Dilfer threw for 1,882 yards with 15 touchdowns and 10 interceptions in those 11 wins — almost comically low numbers in the modern era, but enough to get him to declare he was going to DisneyWorld.
4. Nick Foles, 2016 Eagles
One of life’s great mysteries is how Foles goes from barely average starter everywhere else to Superman in an Eagles uniform. The Eagles’ Super Bowl hopes seemed dashed when Carson Wentz suffered a torn left ACL on Dec. 10, 2017, but Foles threw for 1,410 yards with a touchdown-to-interception ratio of 11/3 over the next six games and won MVP honors in Super Bowl 52, when he threw for 373 yards and accounted for four touchdowns — including the “Philly Special” catch — as the Eagles won their first title since 1960 with a 41-33 victory over Brady and the Patriots.
Foles should probably be ranked even higher for helping to inspire the most euphoric episode of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia,” with Rob McElhenney’s disbelief speaking for all of us who have finally seen a beloved team win it all.
Hard to explain if you’re not from Philly. They joy. The joy. THE JOY. #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/GWoL2GF7Rm
— Rob McElhenney (@RMcElhenney) February 5, 2018
3. Jim Plunkett, 1980 Oakland Raiders
Perhaps the closest comp to Garoppolo. Plunkett was a former no. 1 overall draft pick of the Patriots who was just 34-53 as a starter and seemed settled into the backup life before being promoted to the no. 1 job in place of Dan Pastorini with the Raiders off to a 2-3 start. Plunkett, who turned 33 in December 1980, won 13 of his 15 starts, including all four in the playoffs as the Raiders became the first wild card team to win the Super Bowl. He was named the MVP of Super Bowl XV after throwing three touchdown passes in just 13 completions. Three years later, Plunkett directed the Raiders to their most recent Super Bowl win, becoming just the fifth quarterback to that point to start multiple Super Bowl victories.
2. Kurt Warner, 1999 Rams
We mostly went with in-season quarterback changes here, but it’s impossible to construct a list of out-of-nowhere championship teams and quarterbacks without mentioning the Rams and Warner. The Arena Football League veteran and former supermarket stock clerk had thrown just 11 NFL passes when Trent Green suffered a season-ending knee injury in a preseason game in August 1999. But Warner stepped in and became the conductor of the unstoppable “Greatest Show On Turf” by throwing for 4,353 yards and 41 touchdowns and winning regular season MVP honors before throwing the tie-breaking 73-yard touchdown pass to Isaac Bruce that gave the Rams their first title in almost 50 years with a 23-16 victory over the Tennessee Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV. Dick Vermeil joined Warner in the Hall of Fame this summer — an unimaginable sentence when Green went down.
1. Tom Brady, 2001 Patriots
Talk about butterfly effect. How is NFL history changed if Drew Bledsoe throws the ball away or steps out of bounds three yards earlier on Sept, 23, 2001, or if Mo Lewis simply gives him a tap to nudge him on to the Patriots’ sideline? Instead, Bledsoe was nearly killed by Lewis’ lethal but legal hit and Brady, already Belichick’s preferred choice at quarterback, took over and kept the starting job after directing the Patriots to five wins in his first eight starts.
September 23, 2001: Mo Lewis drills Drew Bledsoe late in the 4th quarter of the Jets 10-3 win over New England. @TomBrady eventually replaces Bledsoe in the game and remains the Patriots QB for the next 20 years. pic.twitter.com/p9p6wChk1l
— This Day In Sports Clips (@TDISportsClips) September 23, 2022
The newly-entrenched Brady and the Patriots didn’t lose again until 2002, after he’d begun building his rep as the most prolific winner of the Super Bowl era by directing a last-second game-winning drive in a 20-17 win over Warner and the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. Twenty-one years, nine Super Bowl appearances, six championships and one victorious power struggle regarding Garoppolo’s future later, he’s still going.
