Jimmy Garoppolo kills 49ers’ first good drive with inexcusable interception

When you make a mistake in an important football game, the only thing do to is to move on to the next play. This has not been a successful strategy for the 49ers in the first half of their divisional round playoff game against the Packers, as several of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo’s receivers have betrayed their limited field general with some truly agonizing drops.

The most agonizing of those drops came with 34 seconds left in the first half, when Garoppolo threw an unusually prefect ball over the middle to tight end George Kittle, and Kittle just flat-out dropped it. If Kittle had held on, the post route he ran against Green Bay’s defense probably would have led to a touchdown.

Garoppolo suffered several drops from his receivers in the first half, and San Francisco’s anemic offense had a stretch of four straight three-and-outs. Only the 49ers’ defense kept this thing from getting out of hand — much like Week 3, when the Packers got out to a 17-0 lead before the 49ers came back to make it a 30-28 Packers win with a last-second field goal by Green Bay kicker Mason Crosby.

If the 49ers were going to crawl back from a 7-0 deficit, somebody was going to have to catch the ball. And with 6:36 left in the first half, Kittle made an incredible 15-yard catch on second-and-10 from the San Francisco 23-yard line to keep things rolling. This time, Garoppolo made an excellent throw, and Kittle wasn’t going to let his quarterback down again.

Unfortunately for the 49ers, Garoppolo ended that drive with a forced interception to Packers safety Adrian Amos in the red zone.

In the first half, Garoppolo completed three of nine passes for 43 yards, that interception, and the loss of any goodwill he had regarding any of those earlier good throws.