Kyle Shanahan Takes Comical Jab at Jimmy Garoppolo's Mobility While Discussing 49ers Run Game
By Sam Dunn
The San Francisco 49ers are still smarting from their Super Bowl LIV defeat at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs. Head coach Kyle Shanahan, who got it done so often in 2019 thanks to a punishing defense and an opportunistic run game, was asked on Tuesday about what his team might do this offseason to bolster their rushing attack further -- and his response was the best kind of snarky.
Against the backdrop of the NFL Combine, he insisted that quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo ought to improve his 40-yard dash time.
How can the 49ers improve their running game?
— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) February 25, 2020
Shanahan: "We’ve gotta catch Baltimore. We’ve gotta get Jimmy’s 40 up."
This isn't just a silly throwaway from Shanahan, of course. With the annual arrival of the Combine comes a very special portion of the NFL's silly season, one in which we overanalyze the results of every drill and thumb-to-pinkie hand measurement.
Sure, it would be nice to have league MVP Lamar Jackson behind center with all his gamebreaking speed, but Jimmy G led his team to a Super Bowl -- he's no slouch even if he won't win any footraces against skill players any time soon.
SHOCKER (not a shocker): #49ers GM John Lynch commits to QB Jimmy Garoppolo (because teams don't evaluate players on one quarter of football). https://t.co/uccio3wPMr
— Niners Wire (@TheNinersWire) February 26, 2020
Take a page from Shanahan's book, folks. When we start burying draft prospects prematurely because they ran a 4.7 instead of a 4.6, keep in mind that tenths of a second only tell a modest part of the story.