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Jimmy Garoppolo and the Double Standard of Quarterback Mythmaking

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When analysts are asked to talk about the qualities that make Jimmy Garoppolo a good starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, they often resort to the same subset of talking points: accuracy, leadership, poise under pressure, and intelligence.

This is, however, in spite of the fact that Garoppolo as a quarterback does not actually possess many of these qualities. He’s frustratingly jumpy in the pocket with spotty footwork, has trouble deciphering blitzes and making smart decisions when they do arrive, and is accurate only when the system around him simplifies the game down for him to near-rookie levels.

His abilities as a leader of men has, for the most part, never been in question, but in truth he has quietly shown a consistent pattern of an unwillingness to take accountability in losses -- including after his disastrous performance in a Sunday Night Football loss to an equally disastrous Broncos team -- and reportedly has a habit of “vanishing” over the offseason, the time when most quarterbacks praised for their leadership are communicative with their teammates and coaches.

And yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, many of these positive narratives surrounding Garoppolo have stuck around for years, and it takes mistakes of gargantuan levels to start to swing the media and the court of public opinion in the opposite direction.


Narratives around Jimmy Garoppolo remain puzzlingly incorrect. Image from: NBC Sports Bay Area.

Judging by pure accuracy and EPA/play metrics, Garoppolo seems to have had an extremely positive tenure in San Francisco; his Completion % of 68.5 is 13th-best among quarterbacks who have played significant snaps since 2017, and his EPA/play of 0.181 is 6th-best in the same span. He’s also led the team on two deep playoff runs, in 2019 where they were agonizingly close to beating Patrick Mahomes’ Chiefs in the Super Bowl, and last season where the 49ers made a surprise run to the NFC Championship, a game in which they led the eventual champion Rams by 10 points heading into the 4th quarter.

It just always seems, though, that the 49ers continue to win games not because of Garoppolo, but merely with him. In their 2019 playoff run, the 49ers' famous 37-20 beatdown of Green Bay in the NFC Championship was powered by 286 rushing yards off 38 carries from Raheem Mostert, Deebo Samuel, Tevin Coleman, and Matt Breida. Mostert on his own had 220 yards and all four of the team’s touchdowns; Garoppolo attempted just eight passes and completed six of them for 77 yards.

Hell, sometimes they win in spite of him, and they’ve even on multiple occasions lost crucial games because of him. In their Super Bowl loss, Garoppolo went 20/31 for 219 yards, 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions, good for a 69.2 passer rating. San Francisco was outscored 21-0 in the fourth quarter to lose the game, and Garoppolo famously missed an open Emmanuel Sanders for what could have been the game-winning touchdown. And just last year in the playoffs, Garoppolo did this to end the game.

Historically, Garoppolo is unable to deal with pressure, especially in crucial situations, and this shows up both on tape and in the stat sheet. According to Football Outsiders, Garoppolo faced the eighth-lowest pressure rate last season; when his pocket was clean, his DVOA of 64.7% was third-best in the league, but when he was pressured his DVOA plummeted to -95.4% (the league average when pressured is -74.0%). That 160.1% drop-off between clean and pressured DVOA was second-worst in the NFL. 2021 wasn’t an anomaly, either-- in 2019, his best statistical year, Garoppolo was eighth-best in DVOA when unpressured, and sixth-worst in DVOA with pressure, at -81.3%. That year, his drop-off between clean and pressured DVOA was fourth-worst in football.

The 49ers offense is predicated on establishing the ground game with innovative zone run concepts which can shift the defense to one side of the field and can cause them to commit more defenders into the box, both of which often create big passing windows over the middle of the field for talented receivers like Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk to accrue yardage after the catch. San Francisco has also consistently had an elite offensive line and one of the best defenses in the league over the past three years.

These strategies aim to make Garoppolo’s job as a game manager as simple as possible, partly evident in the fact that his average intended depth of target beyond the line of scrimmage is the third-lowest among qualified quarterbacks since he first started playing in Kyle Shanahan's offense. 

With all of this in mind, why have all these positive myths about who Jimmy Garoppolo is as a quarterback stuck around for so long? It's a difficult and loaded question, but much of this discussion is rooted in the media's coverage and the public perception of white and black athletes, and the inequity that comes with their analysis.


Narratives in the NFL, and in the sports world as a whole, are a funny thing. They have the power to decide MVP races, to lose people their jobs, to earn players new contracts, and a great many other things in the wide spectrum of failure and success. Often fickle and unpredictable, incorrect narratives can wildly swing public perception and the team’s handling of individual players.

Take pre-draft narratives, for instance. Unsubstantiated claims can sometimes stick to a player so strongly that it materially affects how teams start to view that player, and can cause them to fall in the draft much further than expected-- potentially costing the player millions of dollars in the short term.

Justin Fields is a fascinating example of bizarre pre-draft stories having a profound effect on his draft position, and by extension, his career to date. Coming into what ended up being his final year in college, Fields was widely considered to be the “1B” of the draft class to Trevor Lawrence’s “1A”, as both had prototypical builds and physical tools with the accuracy and results in college to boot.

In two seasons at Ohio State, Fields won the Big Ten Championship and helped earn his team a spot in the College Football Playoff both years. He finished third and seventh in Heisman voting across those two years, completed 68.4% of his passes, and threw 63 touchdowns against 9 interceptions.

Most notably, he squared off against Trevor Lawrence in the semifinals of the CFP in what was the final season for both quarterbacks. Fields took a hard (and ultimately illegal) hit to the ribs in the middle of the game, but ended up staying in the game. 

Justin Fields stayed in the game after this hit to throw six touchdowns in a win. Photo from: Butch Dill/AP Photo.

He finished the game 22-28 for 385 yards and 6 touchdowns, and Ohio State beat Clemson 49-28 to advance to the National Championship Game. In one fell swoop, Fields showcased his pro-readiness against a talented defense, showed both accuracy and elite athleticism with gaudy numbers, and displayed grit and all the intangibles you could want from a young signal-caller.

Justin Fields did not end up being the second overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. He wasn't even the second or third quarterback selected in the draft; he eventually went 11th overall to the Chicago Bears as the fourth quarterback picked. The difference in total money of the 4-year contracts signed between the 2nd overall pick, Zach Wilson, and Fields was a little over $16 million.



Fields has yet to find success with Chicago in his young career, so it's extremely easy with the benefit of hindsight to say he deserved to fall in the draft. But the fact of the matter is that the bizarre narratives surrounding Fields that latched on in pre-draft coverage that summer spoke to the same, tired clichés that black quarterbacks face year after year, and were for the most part incorrect and not based on data.

Field's draft slip has been well-documented in articles such as this one from The Ringer and this one from SB Nation, but the long and short of it is that Fields was the subject of a pre-draft smear campaign -- something which is relatively common for prospects leading up to the NFL Draft, as teams are always trying to do anything they can to have their preferred targets fall to their draft slot -- and those narratives stuck not insignificantly due to racial biases in our judgment of NFL quarterbacks.

Probably the biggest narrative that sunk Fields was the notion that he was incapable of getting past his first read. This is usually a red flag amongst young quarterbacks, as it shows a lack of processing power and usually translates to more difficulty reading pro-style defenses and sometimes an inability to learn more complicated defenses and blitz patterns entirely. Around the time when this narrative started circulating, which can be traced back to the Senior Bowl in late January, there was an immediate correlation with Fields' pre-draft stock dropping, while the stock of quarterbacks Zach Wilson and Mac Jones, both of whom are white, skyrocketed upwards as the debate over who should be the second quarterback selected after Lawrence heated up:


The actual facts, however, tell a different story. Per Benjamin Solak in a piece in The Draft Network, Justin Fields moved through his progressions and threw beyond that first read 42 times, for a rate of 19.09%.

By contrast, Zach Wilson did that at a rate of 14.2% and Mac Jones did it just 9.72% of the time. Even Trevor Lawrence only did it at a 16.99% clip.

Justin Fields was subject to statistically inaccurate and clichéd narratives leading up to the draft. Photo from: Sports Illustrated.

And yet, this "tunnel vision" narrative thrust onto Fields had immense staying power, as it was one of the main topics of discussion when his name was mentioned in pre-draft coverage. NFL.com's official scouting report for Fields, written by Lance Zierlein, states that he "needs to become a full-field reader and prevent his eyes from becoming transfixed on primary targets", and that he has a "slower operation time". The first weakness listed for him by Bleacher Report's NFL scouting department is that he was "Not asked to make a lot of true progressions". Pro Football Network's Tony Pauline writes in the first paragraph of the "negatives" section of his report on Fields, "Slow to process and at times slow pulling the trigger. Stares down the primary target".

Pauline, who was one of the main voices of this narrative on Fields, described Zach Wilson as "smart, instinctive... [and] poised... [with] incredible football instincts and intellect" and wrote about Mac Jones, "Poised and tremendously smart... displays tremendous sense and wherewithal of what's happening on the field." and also explicitly mentions that Jones "Goes through progressions" as one of his main positives.

The next-biggest negative narrative about Fields that seemed to stick was concerns over his leadership and work ethic. In March, ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky went on the Pat McAfee show and stated that he had heard concerns from unnamed NFL sources that Fields is "a last-guy-in, first-guy-out type of quarterback" and that there are concerns over his "desire to go be a great quarterback" as opposed to his "desire to be a big-time athlete".

Personally, I find it hard to believe that Fields, who was already the consensus #2 to Lawrence before even playing his final year at OSU but ended up being one of the most prominent advocates of the Big Ten playing their 2020 season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and who reportedly took painkiller injections on the sideline to famously return to the Clemson game after he took that hit to the ribcage, was sorely missing a love of the game. And after these comments first circulated, Fields' coaches and teammates were swift in coming to his defense; still, this narrative was allegedly a hot topic of discussion among NFL sources, and Orlovsky -- yes, that Orlovsky -- felt it necessary to publicly fling this dirt onto Fields without vetting any of these sources. Orlovsky ended up issuing an official apology the next day and apparently even tried to reach out to Fields, but the damage had already been done.

It's disappointing that this seemingly unfounded idea even had the platform to enter the channels of public discourse, and even more so that this narrative didn't go away quickly. Sadly, Fields is hardly the first black quarterback to face doubts about his "poise", "processing power", and "desire to win", even in the face of evidence to the contrary.


The dichotomy between the language used to describe young black and white quarterbacks is fairly well-documented. In a landmark study back in 2010 by Eugenio Mercurio and Vincent F. Filak, which examined "4,745 attributions used to describe Black and White National Football League quarterbacks over a 10-year period", the difference in the way QB prospects were talked about was clear. "Black quarterbacks were primarily described with words and phrases that emphasized their physical gifts and their lack of mental prowess. Conversely, White quarterbacks were described as less physically gifted, but more mentally prepared for the game and less likely to make mental errors". 

Some surface-level progress has been made over time -- this past week, 11 quarterbacks who were non-white started games for their teams, as opposed to only 5 non-white starting quarterbacks at this exact time in 2010 -- and we're beginning to see more and more black quarterbacks, including the more "athletic" read-option-heavy prospects, drafted higher. But as the different scales upon which Fields and Wilson or Jones were judged by shows us, there's still a long way to go in changing our prejudices of what an NFL quarterback should look like.

The coded language used to discredit black quarterbacks has evolved and multiplied, rather than disappearing. Beyond the played-out discussions of "processing power" and "reading the blitz", discussions of the "sustainability" of the playing styles of black quarterbacks who are prolific at running the football, like Lamar Jackson or Jalen Hurts, is commonplace, for instance. 

Cam Newton, with his trademark bruising running style, endured a multitude of injuries as his career went on, which was a large contributor to these "sustainability" discussions reaching a fever pitch today. Conversely, Josh Allen, who is white, is eager to lower his throwing shoulder or invite contact from defenders, and yet such concerns about his durability are rather silent in NFL media circles. If you search "Josh Allen" and "sustainability" on Google, the only discussion about this from a major source comes from a recent Colin Cowherd clip, where he likened Allen's running style to Newton's. At the time of posting, major NFL media sources have yet to pick up that story, and it doesn't show up at all in Google's first page of news results about Allen. Meanwhile:



Whether it's fair or not -- Allen, to his credit, has over the past two years shown sharper accuracy in pure passing situations than Jackson or Hurts -- there is a real double standard in our willingness to even entertain discussions of the "sustainability" of white and black quarterbacks' playing styles.

There's so much more to unpack in this discussion, and I strongly recommend this article from Andscape for further reading on the dogwhistle terms still prevalent in the NFL and about the evolution of the "athletic" tag used for different quarterback prospects.


The tide may be starting to turn. We are starting to see more black quarterbacks picked highly in the NFL Draft and shown slightly more faith and patience than in years past, and Jimmy Garoppolo's facade of being a "cerebral" and "poised" quarterback may be starting to crack after his latest gaffe on the national stage. But we still have a widespread problem that is the language we use to describe white athletes versus that which we use to talk about black athletes.  

Though most prominent in the NFL, this isn't a purely football-centric problem-- or even solely a problem for quarterbacks, for that matter. Among draft prospects spanning every position in the NFL, scouts are statistically more likely to describe black players as being blessed with "natural" athleticism while being a "raw" and "unrefined"  "underachiever". Meanwhile, white players are statistically more likely to have descriptors bestowed upon them like being a hard "worker", "intelligent", "gritty", and an "overachiever":


Occurrence of different descriptors used for black and white NFL Draft prospects. Data from: Deadspin.

This entire topic may prompt a much broader societal introspection. I don't have all the answers as to how to go about that, but what I can do as someone who's been watching football my entire life is implore you to try to look past the common clichés surrounding black athletes in the league. Instead, take it a step further from just chewing on what you hear from the more old-fashioned NFL media sources and perform some simple analysis to discern myth from fact. I promise you, if you open your mind a little more as to what a "prototypical" quarterback can look like and play like, it will make your experience of watching and analyzing football that much more fun-- it certainly has done that for me.

So, in a sense, I guess we would all be better off going past our "first read". ■
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Comments

  1. chakruOctober 4, 2022 at 9:33 PM

    Nice. I've felt similarly in the gut for a while. Great to see data backing it.

    ReplyDelete

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