Super Bowl 55 shows why SF 49ers need elite quarterback play

The SF 49ers are going to be asking themselves “what could have been?” as they sit back and prepare to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Kansas City Chiefs battle it out for the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl 55.

The epitaph for the Niners’ 2020 campaign was injuries, yes. There’s no getting around that. But the presence of two of the greats at the game’s most important position in the Super Bowl reveals a truth San Francisco hasn’t yet embraced.

In order to win a Super Bowl, at least to be in contention of doing so with any regularity, requires elite quarterbacking.

The four teams in the conference championship round each had one of these. Two of them, the Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Tom Brady, are first-ballot Hall of Famers. The Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, whose fourth-quarter comeback over the SF 49ers in Super Bowl LIV (sorry for the reminder), is on track for the same and is leaving little doubt he’ll be among those in Canton. Meanwhile, even the Bills’ Josh Allen was viewed as a dark-horse candidate for the NFL’s MVP honors this season.

Now, it’s Brady and Mahomes at the center stage in the Super Bowl.

There are outliers, yes. In 2015, the Denver Broncos rode their defense, not an aging quarterback in Peyton Manning, to a Super Bowl win over the Carolina Panthers. Both the Buccaneers before, back in the 2002 season, and the Baltimore Ravens have also clinched championships by their defensive laurels.

But if there has been one constant among those hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in recent seasons, it’s been the teams with a great signal-caller under center.

What does Super Bowl 55 reveal for Jimmy Garoppolo, SF 49ers?

The Niners could make an offseason change at quarterback, a would-be move from their current starter, Jimmy Garoppolo. Or they couldn’t. Depending on who’s available and who’s deemed a best fit for head coach Kyle Shanahan’s offense, there’s equally a chance San Francisco retains Jimmy G.

Shanahan and general manager John Lynch have stated as much.

Sure, Garoppolo was a big reason why the SF 49ers got to Super Bowl LIV a year ago. He passed for nearly 4,000 yards during the regular season and was even tied for the league lead in fourth-quarter comebacks.

But Garoppolo wasn’t asked to do too much in the playoffs, and his fourth-quarter meltdown against the Chiefs in the Super Bowl that season has led to much of the speculation surrounding his future right now.

As such, the Niners have two routes from which they can choose. The first would be to hope and/or assume Garoppolo eventually turns into that true franchise-elite player he was initially thought to be back in 2017. At 29 years old, though, one can question how much more he’ll develop.

The other option, of course, is to move on from him this offseason. While there are bonuses to this, such as freeing up $24.1 million in much-needed salary cap space, it would also require multiple contingency plans at quarterback that are anything but close to being determined. Making switches under center is always a precarious measure, and San Francisco’s options are going to be limited to a small crop of free-agent targets, a would-be blockbuster trade or unknown commodities in the 2021 NFL Draft.

It’s not exactly an easy choice.

Regardless, Super Bowl 55 is revealing a painful truth: Teams legitimately wanting to win a Super Bowl, especially multiple ones in an open window, have to have an elite quarterback. The rest of hopefuls well outside of contention are all searching for an elite quarterback. There are only so many to go around.

And that fact might be the final factor in the SF 49ers’ offseason decision-making plans.