Still don’t know if Garoppolo is Niners’ answer

We all know the numbers by now: one completion for zero yards with an interception. Two of his passes were deflected at the line of scrimmage and he made a horrible throw on a hot read following a blitz off the end.

Not a very good return to the game, but one that can be easily written off as being rusty.

But here’s the real problem: Garoppolo remains as big an enigma now as he did when he tantalized fans about what could be with his 5-0 finish to the 2017 season. That, in large part, led to the 49ers making Garoppolo the game’s highest-paid quarterback going into 2018. He has since been eclipsed in that department, but Garoppolo is paid like a top-5 quarterback and his performance against the Denver Broncos was not that.

But who is the real Garappolo? Is he the one who looked like the second coming of Joe Montana at the end of the 2017 season, or the guy who looked shaky in two games before going out for the season with a torn knee in 2018?

The scary thing is: no one really know what kind of player Garoppolo is and can be. His body of work is simply too small a sample size. Here are the numbers that we know for sure are: he’s a 27-year-old quarterback with two significant injuries, who is entering his sixth season in the NFL and has appeared in 26 games, making 10 career starts.

Garoppolo, through five years, has yet to even play in a season’s worth of games, so maybe his performance Monday shouldn’t be all that surprising. Game-wise, he is a very young quarterback and no one would give up on a guy after only 10 starts. But when you’re making $27.5 million a year, there are certain expectations and Garoppolo did not come close to those Monday night.

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Menlo School senior Angel More, a 16-year-old marathon swimmer, this past weekend completed the 20 Bridges Manhattan Swim, a 28.5-mile (45.9-kilometer) route that took More under 20 bridges as she swam through the Hudson, Harlem and East rivers in New York, which took her a hair more than nine hours to complete.

“It was very cool to see all the buildings and bridges (of New York) as I normally am not able to sightsee while I swim,” More said in a press release from the school. “It’s usually water and water for miles.”

It’s just another notch on the belt for More (pronounced “mo-ray”). At the age of 10, she became the youngest person to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania — the tallest peak on the African continent. Last summer, she swam the final two legs to become the youngest person to complete the California Triple Crown: a 12-mile swim from Anacapa in the Santa Barbara Channel Island chain to the mainland, which she accomplished as a 14-year-old in 2017; a 20-mile swim from Catalina Island to the mainland in June the following year and followed that two months later by making the 21-mile Lake Tahoe swim, from Camp Richardson on the South Shore to Incline Village on the North Shore.

More is using her athletic accomplishments as a way to bring attention to children living in poverty. Working with Children International, More has started a campaign to raise $1 million to fund 5,000 scholarships for teens in need around the world.

For more information on her fundraiser, go to children.org/make-a-difference/other-ways-to-help/angel-more.

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Golf success keeps coming for Isaiah Salinda, a South San Francisco native and a graduate of Serra High School and Stanford University.

Salinda, and his Stanford teammate Brandon Wu, was named to the 2019 U.S. Walker Cup team Sunday. The equivalent of the Ryder Cup in professional golf, the Walker Cup pits the best American amateurs against the best amateurs Europe has to offer.

The event is scheduled for Sept. 7-8 at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, Merseyside, England.

It’s been a solid six months of golf for Salinda. He and Wu helped lead Stanford to the 2019 NCAA team golf championship in May before reaching the round-of-16 at the U.S. Amateur for the second year in a row.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117.