The easy narrative following San Francisco’s 33-6 beat-down of the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Mass. will be that 49ers quarterback and former Patriot Jimmy Garoppolo went to his old stomping grounds and showed his former team why they made a mistake in trading him by leading the Niners to a win.

However, things are never that simple in football or with the 49ers’ QB.

Garoppolo played well enough to win on Sunday. The bar was low, given how far the Patriots have fallen this past season and how well the 49ers defense is playing as of late, but he hurdled it. He’s now 26-8 all-time as a starting quarterback, and that’s a record you cannot take for granted.

But the real reason the 49ers won Sunday had little to do with Garoppolo.

No, the Niners had, despite countless injuries, a better 48-man roster than the Patriots, and their superior talent manhandled a New England team that looked nothing like the machines coach Bill Belichick has built over the last two decades.

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In fact, Garoppolo was asked by head coach and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan to do the absolute bare minimum against New England. Simply: don’t lose us the game.

And when, on Sunday, Garoppolo hinted early that he might not heed that advice, throwing an ugly-as-sin interception on the second possession of the game, Shanahan changed the game plan to make it even easier on his quarterback.

For the second week in a row, a third time this season, and a fifth time in his last seven games as a starter, Garoppolo was asked to simply hand the ball off or throw short, easy-to-complete screens and slants. Shanahan was hiding him, plain and simple.

And now that the 49ers are back in the hunt for more than just a berth in the playoffs, it’ll be interesting to see if they can continue to win with that formula.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Sunday’s offensive performance from the 49ers was outstanding and deserves plaudits. The Niners ran roughshod over a wholly inferior Patriots team without much — if any resistance. (That was as strange to type as I’m sure it was to read). On 37 carries Sunday, the Niners amassed 197 yards on the ground.

If you built up a respect for the Pats and head coach Bill Belichick over the last two decades, it was tough to watch — a true fall from grace. If you built up some acrimony over that time, Sunday’s game was a party.

And no member of the Shanahan family is ever going to turn down an opportunity to win a game by running the ball. I think a diagram of an outside zone run is at the center of their family crest.

Even the less run-inclined coaches in the league will take a ground-and-pound victory like the Niners’ on Sunday. And if you can win that way, by all means, win that way. Ultimately, the identity of the Niners is to be run the ball with gusto and to play tenacious defense. They’ve done that the last two weeks and have won twice.

But that’s just one kind of smoke. It can only carry you so far.

No, the great offenses — like last year’s Niners, up to a point — can beat you in both the run game and the passing game. True offensive balance — the kind Shanahan desires, not the ham-fisted kind we see from coordinators tying to make the run-pass numbers match — is true strength in this league. But right now, San Francisco’s quarterback is more of a liability than an asset. And that’s not just me saying that — it’s Shanahan.

Garoppolo completed 20 of 25 passes for 277 yards and two interceptions on Sunday. Not a bad stat line, though one interception was galling and the other was a byproduct of a questionable Hail Mary toss at the end of the first half.

But the box score lies. Of those 20 completions, 10 came at or behind the line of scrimmage. Shanahan, using wide receivers Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel (the latter of which spent time as a running back in this game, before picking up an unnecessary fourth-quarter injury) on frequent jet and orbit motions, created a fake run-pass option for Garoppolo Sunday – a faux-p-o. And it wasn’t Garoppolo making the choice, it was Shanahan. Whether it was a handoff, a shovel pass, or a screen pass, the Niners’ playmakers had the ball outside the tackles stretching the not-exactly-athletic Patriots’ defense sideline-to-sideline and creating advantageous one-on-one matchups.

And of those 10 other Garoppolo competitions, only one of them traveled more than 15 yards in the air. It took an exceptional athletic effort by Aiyuk to rein in that pass — a better ball would have resulted in an easy touchdown.

Only two Garoppolo throws Sunday — by my count — were made in a tight window.

What the 49ers did on Sunday worked. There will no doubt be other games this season where that will be the case.

But there will also be contests where Shanahan cannot hide his quarterback by pulling back the offense to be a series of handoffs and screens. There will be contests where the defense, which is still ravaged by injury, won’t be playing against a quarterback who makes Garoppolo look like a dramatic upgrade. There will be contests where the Niners don’t take an early lead and are therefore not allowed to control the game script.

What happens then?

Shanahan can try, but not even he is good enough to keep Garoppolo under wraps all season. Even a grandmaster only has so many moves.

Nearly halfway through the season, we’re asking the same question we were asking in January and February, August and September.

But does Garoppolo have another gear — the kind we’ve seen flashed in 2017 and 2019. Can he take over a game and lead the 49ers to a victory?

If he can, these tough and resilient 49ers might just be back in the Super Bowl hunt.

If not, it will be the defining factor of this Niners season.

I don’t think we’ll have to wait long to find out. The Niners’ have done exceptionally well to be back in the thick of things as the calendar flips. Now, they get the toughest November schedule in the NFL — the Seahawks, Packers, Saints, and Rams loom.

You can’t use smoke and mirrors to exit that gauntlet with your season dreams intact. No sir.

The Niners are going to need their quarterback to start making some winning plays.