Fewer than 48 hours after playing in his second NFC Championship Game in the last three seasons, Jimmy Garoppolo bid adieu to 49ers fans.
"It's been a hell of a ride, guys. Love you guys. So, see ya," Garoppolo said in what amounted to a farewell press conference on Tuesday.
It was Super Bowl title or bust for Garoppolo, who saw the writing on the wall bolded and underlined when the 49ers selected Trey Lance with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft.
For some franchises, it would be difficult — perhaps impossible — to part with a quarterback who has led a team to a Super Bowl appearance and another conference title game in the span of three years.
Not for the 49ers.
The standard for San Francisco quarterback play was set by a pair of Hall of Fame passers who won multiple championships and MVP Awards, Joe Montana and Steve Young.
Nearly 30 years after the team won its fifth Super Bowl title, that standard remains unchanged.
"There are some cities where you get a team to a championship game and you're a hero," Young told KNBR this week. "It's like, 'Great, thanks, that was awesome, it was memorable.' It'll define your career in a positive way. And then there are some cities, like ours, where it's not about that. It's about Super Bowls."
Young isn't wrong.
Since the two-time MVP was last a full-time starter in 1998, the 49ers have spent a quarter-century chasing greatness at the most important position in sports.
Steve Mariucci twice made the playoffs with Jeff Garcia, Jim Harbaugh and Alex Smith paired up for a NFC Championship Game run and the 49ers reached a Super Bowl and another NFC title game after Harbaugh replaced Smith with dual-threat quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Kyle Shanahan was on the brink of coaching the 49ers to their sixth Super Bowl victory when Garoppolo's offense stalled and San Francisco's defense melted down against the Kansas City Chiefs in February 2020. Two years later, Garoppolo's game-sealing interception against the Rams in the fourth quarter of Sunday's matchup at SoFi Stadium leaves the 49ers exactly where they were when Young suffered a career-ending concussion in Week 3 of the 1999 season.
It's once again time for a transition at the quarterback position, and anything less than greatness won't be tolerated.
"This is a city that demands that and I love that about being a 49er, honestly," Young said. "The pressure is the thing where you learn the most about yourself. For good or for bad, there are cities where you can get in the playoffs and they make a parade, but not this one, and I love it."
The standard is higher in San Francisco because legendary head coach Bill Walsh demanded as much.
Back in the 1980s, Walsh pitted Montana and Young against one another. The result was a tenuous situation that clearly irritated Montana, who had already won two Super Bowl titles when Walsh announced an open competition for the starting job.
"Our strength is at quarterback, but our problem is that we have two," Walsh said before the 1988 season. "There's a quarterback controversy developing and we're going to have to select between Steve Young and Joe Montana."
The experiment wasn't an overnight success — the 49ers finished the regular season 9-7 — but Montana secured back-to-back blowout playoff victories before leading a game-winning Super Bowl drive in the fourth quarter against the Cincinnati Bengals.
"Joe Montana is not human," Bengals wide receiver Chris Collinsworth said postgame. "He's not God, but he's definitely not human."
The standard for 49ers quarterback play, it turns out, was still being set. The next year, Montana won the first of his back-to-back MVP awards and the 49ers cruised to their fourth Super Bowl title.
When a serious elbow injury to Montana forced Young into action as a full-time starter in 1991, expectations continued to escalate. His MVP season in 1992 helped convince the 49ers to trade Montana to Kansas City, and gave the fan base hope that the days after Montana's reign would be just as fruitful.
As 49ers fans watched a Hall of Famer succeed a Hall of Famer, it's easy to see why no quarterback in the last two-plus decades has been able to live up to the lofty standard that doesn't exist in many other locales.
"Since I've gotten here," Garoppolo said Tuesday. "It's been about me wanting to leave the place better than when I got here."
There's little doubt Garoppolo achieved that goal, but it's not the one most 49ers fans expect their quarterback to aspire to. This is a franchise where MVP-caliber play and Super Bowl titles are how a quarterback is judged, even it's been almost 30 years since the last time the 49ers hoisted a Lombardi trophy.
Think Lance, the 21-year-old who is suddenly the face of the franchise, feels pressure? It's not from being the No. 3 pick in the draft or from needing to earn the respect of veteran players inside the locker room.
That pressure comes from being the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, a title which still carries the sky-high expectations set before Lance was even born.
