Figurative alarms sounded during last year’s training camp when 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who was coming off an ACL tear, threw five interceptions in one day. It became an irrelevant footnote in a season where the 49ers went to the Super Bowl. Perhaps that’s why panic buttons got a lot less work Wednesday when Garoppolo tossed a trio of interceptions during red-zone work.
According to reporters at the team facility, defensive lineman Javon Kinlaw, strong safety Johnathan Cyprien and cornerback Richard Sherman all notched INTs off Garoppolo on Wednesday.
While the natural reaction for a quarterback who’s biggest weakness last year was his 2.7 percent interception rate is to shudder at any number of giveaways, there’s some necessary context to provide when it comes to interceptions in training camp.
First, two of Garoppolo’s Wednesday picks were on tipped balls. Cyprien hauled in a throw that got broken up, and Kinlaw dragged a ball out of the air that got tipped at the line of scrimmage. Those types of plays are going to happen. The best news for San Francisco is that they weren’t a result of Garoppolo simply misreading the play and firing a throw into a defender’s chest — something that happened a little more often last season than the 49ers might’ve liked.
The third interception couldn’t be blamed on a tipped ball. Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle described the pass as a “back-foot, across-field floater.” That bad throw is something the coaching staff might actually like to see in a practice setting.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan explained earlier in camp after Garoppolo threw interceptions to Richard Sherman on back-to-back days that practice INTs hold some value.
“Practices are great because you get to experience it from practice and you can coach it the exact same way you would in a game, but it’s a little bit easier because the emotions aren’t there of winning and losing the game and everyone in the world seeing it,” Shanahan said. “So, that’s what’s fun about practice. It’s never fun when a guy makes a mistake, but it’s always fun to coach it because you can actually get better from that for when it does count.”
He went on to explain how practicing against an elite player like Sherman offers reminders to Garoppolo that should help him in the regular season.
“Both of those passes weren’t to the guy Sherm was covering,” Shanahan said. “But if you sail anything over guys, or you look at one guy too long and you’re not knowing where he is, Sherm’s just going to follow your eyes and go and come out of nowhere. That’s happened to him twice in the last two days and that’s something that does happen in games if you’re not aware of those type of players. It’s great to remind him, ‘hey, you’ve got to work on your eyes here. Just because you’re looking here, it doesn’t mean someone else isn’t looking at you and showing up at the end of the play.’ If no one reminds you of that, like Sherm, for an entire training camp or throughout the preseason and you get reminded in Week 1, you’re like, ‘how the hell did that just happen?’ It’s, ‘well, no, that’s bound to happen, but one of our players showed you that, so you correct it.’
“It always goes back to iron sharpening iron. A DB, if he’s squatting on every single route and covering the heck out of us, I’m hoping that we can call a go route versus him to show him, ‘hey, yeah, you’re doing good in these coverages, but we’re going to run by you in this coverage.’ I’m hoping we can generate that in practice so he learns from that and that’s a really good rep.”
With such a limited amount of practices before the regular season and no offseason activities, training camp mistakes are probably even more valuable for Garoppolo. Even his two tipped interceptions Wednesday can be helpful because there are things he can learn about ball placement or timing to avoid similar miscues in games.
That’s why Garoppolo’s outing Wednesday isn’t much of a worry. While he does need to cut down on his giveaways — he threw 13 interceptions last year — his quickest path to doing so may involve tossing a few in camp. If the trend continues into the regular season, then it’ll be time to dust off those panic buttons that got smashed last training camp.