Super Bowl 54: Patrick Mahomes versus Jimmy Garoppolo
The position of quarterback is perhaps the most-heralded position in all of sport, placed on a pedestal like no other to the extent that the one man who throws the ball is worshipped while the people who literally put their lives on the line to stop him being hit remain largely nameless to the masses. In victory, they are the star of the show, with 13 of the last 20 Super Bowl MVP awards being given to quarterbacks. However, with reward comes an overwhelming degree of scrutiny, as stats are poured over to such an extent that post-match analysis becomes more like a maths class; passing yards, rushing yards, pass completion percentages, sacks, dropbacks, 3rd down conversions, yards per throw, passer ratings. Nowhere will this numerical dissection of sixty minutes on a field be more apparent than Hard Rock Stadium in Miami this Sunday night, as Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs take on Jimmy Garoppolo and the San Francisco 49ers at Super Bowl LIV. Both Mahomes and Garoppolo have undergone meteoric rises in the last two seasons, but that’s about the only thing the pair will have in common as their opposing backstories collide for the first time on the biggest stage.
Mahomes is the typical aforementioned superstar, the face of the NFL and legend among Kansas City fans at the age of 24. After having the choice at college of being a professional baseball pitcher or quarterback, Mahomes chose the latter and went on to set all kinds of records in his 4 years at Texas Tech University. Drafted by the Chiefs as the 10thoverall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft and only the 2nd quarterback to be chosen, the Texas native spent a year under the wing of starting quarterback Alex Smith before displacing his mentor in the 2018 off-season, immediately setting the league alight and revitalising an average team into Super Bowl contenders. In terms of the numbers, Mahomes ticks every box, as he threw for 5097 yards and 50 touchdowns in 2018, only the third player to reach such figures behind all-time greats Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. If he was to add a Super Bowl to his list of achievements, it would be viewed as the first of many, akin to Brady’s first win in 2002, and mark the beginning of a Kansas City dynasty.
For Garoppolo, on the other hand, a Super Bowl would be seen less as destiny and more like a muting of the doubters who have droned on throughout his disrupted career. His San Francisco team are far from underdogs, and actually boast a better regular season record, losing 3 games to Kansas City’s 4. In fact, the excellence of the people surrounding Garoppolo has proved to be the problem, as the ability of his team-mates to win games single-handedly has at times left the quarterback redundant, free to sit back and watch his team tear apart the opposition with their running game and then suffocate them defensively. In the NFC Championship game two weeks ago against the Green Bay Packers, running back Raheem Mostert ran for a record-smashing 220 yards and 4 touchdowns, while ‘Jimmy G’, as he is imaginatively referred to by the American media, went an hour and a half without throwing the ball once and completed just 6 passes the entire game. Overall, Garoppolo racked up just 77 passing yards, the lowest number in a playoff game since 1973, while the 49ers romped to a 37-20 win that secured their passage to the Super Bowl. All this creates the misconception that Garoppolo is a dispensable, almost irrelevant cog of the 49ers machine, and that he is just a ‘system quarterback’ i.e. give the ball to the fast guy next to you and stand still. But to have such a view of San Francisco you would have to be oblivious to the way largely the same group of players lost 12 out of 13 games last season while Garoppolo was injured, how the 49ers were carried down the field by their quarterback in no fewer than 5 game-winning drives in the final 2 minutes this season, and how he converted on two 3rd-and-16 attempts in the final minute of the Week 16 clash against the LA Rams to all but secure home-field advantage in the playoffs. You don’t do that by running the ball.
The criticism aired at Garoppolo this season, that if he gets in an aerial shootout with an elite quarterback, such as Mahomes, he will come up short, derives from a general lack of belief in his talent ever since he left Eastern Illinois and joined the NFL. Drafted by the New England Patriots 62nd overall in 2014, he served as the perennial back-up to Tom Brady, officially winning 2 Super Bowls but being the only member of each squad not to play a second of either, before being carted off to the 49ers in 2017 in exchange for a 2nd-round draft pick following a three-year spell in New England which yielded just 2 starts. He spent half his first season on the West Coast in the familiar territory of the subs bench, finally getting his shot as a starter in the 2018 season. A season-ending ACL injury delayed his first true debut season to 2019, five years after he was initially drafted into the league. It is safe to say that should Garoppolo win the Super Bowl in Miami, his ascension to the pedestal shared by so many other quarterbacks will have been a long time coming.
Of course, Garoppolo has been paid handsomely for his time in the reserves and on the treatment table, while Mahomes’ career has not been without its setbacks either. But it is hard to look at Sunday’s game as a game of equals. Mahomes is destined for greatness regardless of whether he wins, while for Garoppolo Super Bowl LIV will decide whether he is just another quarterback who blew his one shot on the biggest stage, or elevates himself to a level where even the critics can’t touch him.
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