49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo ready for his chance to be on the field for a conference title game

Jimmy Garoppolo will play in his first conference championship game on Sunday.

Play is the key word there since it will not be an entirely new atmosphere for the 49ers quarterback. In fact, before he came to the team in a trade during the 2017 season, getting this far in the postseason was almost a given. Garoppolo spent the first few years of his career with the Patriots and even earned a pair of Super Bowl rings as a member of that organization.

Now he is one win away from trying to win a third. The only difference? A minor detail.

This time he’ll be on the field.

Garoppolo was Tom Brady’s backup during those previous playoff runs, and even though he never took a snap this late in any of his previous seasons, he picked up plenty of wisdom and advice and experience that will come in handy on Sunday… and perhaps beyond.

“I just tried to see things from afar,” Garoppolo said of his time in New England, from the day he was a second-round pick in 2014 to the day he was shipped to San Francisco for a second-rounder. “Obviously not being on the field, it's a little different, but (I saw) the preparation that goes into it, the atmosphere in the locker room, the atmosphere in the whole building, really.”

And, of course, he saw Tom Brady.

Garoppolo said he never actually spoke with Brady about how he prepared for playoff games, but he was certainly around to soak it all in.

“The things that I took away from watching him go through it and everything, just the consistency that he had throughout the entire run, whatever it was, the first playoff game, the Super Bowl, he was very consistent between all of it,” Garoppolo said. “I think that just goes into your preparation throughout the week. If you are prepared going into the game then you’re going to play like that.”

Garoppolo may be the most enigmatic quarterback remaining in these playoffs. His opponent on Sunday is the only one of the four who has won a Super Bowl on the field. In the other conference’s championship is last year’s MVP and a quarterback who has resurrected his career with a second team but whose main job is to hand the ball off to Derrick Henry. Garoppolo? It’s hard to know what to make of him exactly.

He’s just completed his first fully healthy year on the field, has a 21-5 overall record as a starter, but is sometimes overlooked when listing the reasons why the 49ers are where they are, hosting the NFC Championship as the top seed in the conference.

“That's just how this world works and you'll get credit if you win a Super Bowl or an NFL MVP or something like that,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said of the recognition that Garoppolo gets (and doesn’t get). “We ran the ball last week, so a lot of people are going to say that Jimmy didn't do enough. There's lots of games this year that we haven't been able to run the ball and we've had to win it by passing. That's what I'm proud of with Jimmy and proud of our team, that you can't really say that we have to win a game a certain way. I know Jimmy doesn't care how we win it, whether we're running it, throwing it, whether we’ve got to do it on defense and protect the ball, or whether we’ve got to air it out and get some points.

“A lot of guys say that it doesn't bother them, but I promise it doesn't bother him.”

Besides, the 49ers give him plenty of recognition for getting them to this point.

“He's just a great guy,” tackle Joe Staley said. “Everything that you see is who he is. He doesn't do anything for the cameras. He doesn't have a fake persona that he shows up. He's a down-to-earth, genuine human being… I could go on and on about him. He's just an incredible leader, incredible player for us and I’m excited he's on our team.”

Garoppolo doesn’t talk very much about his days with the Patriots. He appeared in just 17 games and threw just 94 passes while he was there, so there isn’t much to discuss. But he did get a front row seat to see how championships are forged during his time in New England. Now he is part of the process in San Francisco.

“I feel it here,” he said of the buzz of being so close to the title. “Not trying to compare the two teams, but it's just when you get into that playoff atmosphere and it's an NFC Championship Game, things get amped up. And you have to do the same.”

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.