–When the 49ers visit Kansas City this week, Jimmy Garoppolo will go head-to-head with … the next Jimmy Garoppolo?
It’s hard to draw comparisons being that Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has made just three career starts, but they’ve started nonetheless.
They begin with the fact that both did a lot of watching early on, with Garoppolo making just two starts in three-plus seasons while with New England. Mahomes made just one as a rookie with Kansas City last season.
And then, when given a chance to be the No. 1 quarterback, both immediately took advantage of the opportunity.
Garoppolo won his first five starts for the 49ers, completing 67.1 percent of his passes, totaling six touchdown passes and accumulating a 94.0 passer rating.
Mahomes has opened 2-0 this season, completing 69.1 percent of his passes, totaling 10 touchdowns and accumulating a 143.3 passer rating.
Credit the systems in which they’ve been brought up, Garoppolo insisted this week.
“I think it’s tremendous for a quarterback to sit his first year,” said Garoppolo, who threw only 27 passes as a rookie in 2014, whereas Mahomes threw 35 (including one start) last season. “You get to sit there and see a guy, if you’re lucky, like I got to watch Tom (Brady), Patrick got to watch Alex (Smith), two successful quarterbacks and how they do it.
“You kind of try to put yourself in that situation, how to learn from it, what you would do if you were in the spot they were in. There’s a ton of things that you could benefit from, and I think if you use it properly, it’s good for you.”
–At the same time when two teams were jettisoning kickers, the 49ers were applauding theirs.
Robbie Gould has gone 6-for-6 on field goals, giving him a franchise-record 29 in a row dating to last season.
The 49ers don’t like their 4-to-6 ratio of touchdowns-to-field goals this season, but don’t blame Gould.
“You get scarred over the years,” Shanahan said of his experience with kickers. “It was pretty good in Atlanta; Matt Bryant did a real good job. But earlier on in my career, I just wanted to go for it because I was afraid we weren’t going to make that field goal unless we were inside the 20.
“Now with Robbie, it’s for good reasons he’s made me very confident.”
Shanahan was asked to identify the most nightmarish kicker with whom he’s worked.
“I’ll say someday,” he promised.
QUOTE TO NOTE: “I started to run and felt very slow when those guys started to pull away from me.” — 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, explaining his futile attempt to keep up with Matt Breida on his 66-yard touchdown run against the Detroit Lions.
BY THE NUMBERS: 7 — The number of consecutive wins compiled by Jimmy Garoppolo as an NFL starting quarterback to start his career, which currently is four more than Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes.
