Jimmy Garoppolo’s two most recent fourth-quarter performances have been picked apart by every football analyst on Earth.
So naturally, it’s time for O.J. Simpson, quarterback guru, to weigh in with his thoughts after a couple errant passes that derailed the 49ers’ comeback attempt in Sunday’s season-opening loss to the Cardinals.
Simpson filmed himself Monday morning reacting to several storylines from Sunday’s opening NFL games, including the time-honored tradition of complaining about his fantasy football team (O.J.’s team suffered huge blows with injuries to Marlon Mack and Blake Jarwin, in case you were wondering).
By the time he got to Jimmy G, he’d already made excuses for Tom Brady’s Buccaneers and eviscerated the culture of the Cleveland Browns after just one game under Kevin Stefanski.
“I love my 49ers but Jimmy G, I don’t know what’s going on with you. I’ve just gotten over you missing [Emmanuel] Sanders for what should have been a Super Bowl-winning catch, but I watch you in the fourth quarter,” he said. “C’mon, you had a guy wide open in the end zone. You’re late with the pass. The last play of the game, the guy’s open on an out. You’re late with the pass.”
“I’m watching these defenders celebrate like they did something, and they didn’t do nothing,” he continued. “It was you being late with the pass.”
Simpson may have been away from the game long enough to be accused and acquitted of one of America’s most infamous double murders (and to later have served nine years in prison for stealing sports memorabilia from a dealer), but he’s right about Garoppolo missing an open Kendrick Bourne in the end zone before incompletions to Trent Taylor on the Niners’ last two passes. So he can add that to his post-career résumé.
Garoppolo himself agreed that he and the 49ers missed key opportunities in the closing minutes Sunday, albeit with a classic football cliché:
“It just comes down to execution. In the last minutes like that, every play is crucial. We just didn’t execute.”
In the end, Simpson is only saying what most 49ers observers noticed about the end of the season opener.
The Hall of Fame running back quoted a Niners great and referenced his own two-year run with the team in questioning the validity of Garoppolo’s future.
“I remember Bill Walsh my last year with the Niners, his first year. He said something to me about a quarterback we had,” Simpson recalled, without naming the quarterback in question. “He said ‘He’s great for three quarters, then he’s just good enough in the fourth quarter to get you beat.’ I’m just saying.”
Steve DeBerg surely thanks Simpson for bringing that up again.
