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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The curious cases of two high-profile quarterbacks will be on full display during the NFC Championship game between the 49ers and Rams on Sunday at SoFi Stadium.
Legacies and career narratives, as much as a berth in Super Bowl LVI, hang in the balance.
In one corner is a quarterback whose scorn from his own team’s fans doesn’t match the success he has had on the field. That’s Jimmy Garoppolo, who has a 33-14 career won-loss record, led the 49ers to the Super Bowl two seasons ago and is one win away from doing it again.
Yet it seems as if at least half of the 49ers fans you ask will tell you they’re ready to move on from Jimmy G. for rookie Trey Lance, whom the 49ers traded up to make the No. 3-overall draft pick last spring. No one really knows, however, if Lance, a star at North Dakota State, can play in the NFL.
Garoppolo is scheduled to make $27 million in 2022, which has led to rampant speculation about whether the 49ers might cut or trade him. What if he wins the Super Bowl? What then?
In the other corner is Los Angeles’ Matthew Stafford, who was believed by coach Sean McVay to be the missing piece to a championship puzzle and was acquired specifically to take the Rams to the Super Bowl.
Until Stafford proves otherwise, however, and takes the Rams to the Promised Land, winning the title his predecessor Jared Goff failed to deliver, he will be viewed by many as the same stat-compiling player who lost 95 games in 12 seasons with the Lions.
Stafford skeptics will remind you he was intercepted an NFL-high 17 times this season. Those 17 picks, though, came on 601 pass attempts, which also produced 41 touchdown throws.
The thing is, both quarterbacks deserve props for getting their respective teams to this game — a game away from Super Bowl LVI, also at SoFi in two weeks — but both of them have some warts that show themselves on occasion.
San Francisco fans are seemingly always in wait of a killer Garoppolo interception at the worst possible time. He delivered exactly that in the wild-card playoff win at Dallas. The 49ers were in complete control of the Cowboys, then the Jimmy G. pick gave the Cowboys life, and suddenly San Francisco was forced to sweat out the final result.
It’s plays like that interception — a thoroughly unnecessary and errant overthrow — that have 49ers fans clamoring for Lance to take over.
The AFC Championship game between the Chiefs and Bengals features two quarterbacks — Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow — whom fans are slobbering over. And with good reason: Mahomes is one win away from playing in his third consecutive Super Bowl and Burrow has developed into one of the best young players in the game, backed by his cocksure moxie.
Conversely, the NFC game features two quarterbacks whom their teams’ own fans still are at least a little but unsure of. Yet considering the circumstances, the criticisms seem nitpicky and unjust for Garoppolo and Stafford.
Garoppolo, with his magazine-cover looks, never seems very fazed by it. Part of the secret, he said, has been the support of his family and friends, who try their best to shield from the outside noise.
“It’s just about knowing yourself as a player, as a person, and as long as these guys in this locker room have faith in me and believe in me, that’s all I really care about,” Garoppolo said this week.
Garoppolo’s playoff numbers this month have not exactly drawn the critics to his side. He’s coming off the 13-10 divisional round win in Green Bay, in which the 49ers didn’t produce an offensive touchdown, and he hasn’t thrown a TD pass in two games this postseason.
That, however, hasn’t diminished the public support of his teammates.
“We are able to maintain trust in him because we keep winning,” linebacker Fred Warner said.
“A lot of people give him crap for whatever, but he is as cool and collected as a quarterback as I have ever had, and he’s a perfect guy to lead us to where we need to go,’’ defensive end Nick Bosa said.
“The s–t he takes, consistently people try to pull him down and all he does is try to lead this team,’’ tight end George Kittle said. “He is the sense of calm in the huddle, he is the sense of calm in the storm. He allows us to play football at a high level.”
Stafford said he hasn’t taken time during this ride to reflect on his difficult years in Detroit — three playoff games, all losses.
“I’m just trying to make sure that I’m in the present, being kind of where my feet are planted, and taking care of business here,’’ he said. “Obviously, [I’m] excited about the opportunity. Obviously, there’s a lot at stake.’’
Though the goal remains the same for each team, the stakes for the quarterbacks are always higher.
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