What to do with Jimmy Garoppolo in Week 6 fantasy football

The 49ers are for real for the first time since the Jim Harbaugh era! And all of it with Jimmy G leading the pack! Honestly, that was not a joke. Not since 1990 had the 49ers started the season with four consecutive wins, so something good is brewing and Jimmy Garoppolo is the quarterback of the team so something should go his way. Or maybe not? The jury is still out on that one. While San Francisco has an impeccable record, much of the praise has been given to the 49ers defense. On offense, the 49ers are a true outlier: the team leads the league—by no small margin—in rushing plays run in comparison to passing plays, rushing the ball 57 percent of the time. No wonder Garoppolo has the fewest passes attempted, completions, and yards among starters. So at least let me doubt if everything San Francisco is doing has a lot to do with Jimmy.

The problem Garoppolo posses to fantasy owners is simple, and similar to what is happening with Kirk Cousins — he just doesn’t have enough chances to rack up points. At least Cousins has been somewhat efficient, though. Garoppolo’s 6.2 TD rate is high because of his low passing-volume, but his INT rate of 3.54 is just atrocious — he’s thrown one or more interceptions in three of his four games. In terms of passing yardage, too, the numbers can be misleading. While San Francisco has passed for 936 yards through five games, 494 of those yards (53 percent) have come after the catch. This means Garoppolo’s performance is more dependent on what his receivers do once they catch the ball than on what he provides through his passing ability isolated. Even with that, no 49ers WR/TE has had a performance of more than 20 fantasy points so far and Garoppolo’s best (28 points) was all thanks to throwing three touchdowns. San Francisco might be 4-0, but I’m not buying into Garoppolo being the main contributor to the team’s success.

Fantasy football analysis, San Francisco 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo

Although he threw two touchdowns against the Browns in Week 5 the game script killed Garoppolo’s chances to do more. San Francisco dominated and he limited his game to throwing some easy passes that helped him finish with a bland 181 yards. If Garoppolo gets on the correct pace he’s shown he can get big numbers (he scored 28 fantasy points against Cincinnati in Week 2) but he’s closer to his floor than his ceiling more often than not. There is not much difference between the Rams and the Browns defenses (they’re giving up the 17th- and 16th-most points per game to QBs), and with the 49ers entering the contest as 3.5-point underdogs we can expect Garoppolo to be forced to throw more. Even with that, San Francisco has relied heavily on the rushing game and has one of the best backfields-by-committee. There is too much to lose and little to gain by playing Garoppolo nowadays.

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