Fred Warner: 49ers trust Jimmy Garoppolo 'because we keep winning'

Much has been made about the play of banged-up San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo throughout the playoffs, and an opinion voiced by some, if not many, is that the 49ers have advanced to Sunday's NFC Championship Game against the Los Angeles Rams despite lackluster performances from their signal-caller. 

Per ESPN stats, Garoppolo is last among the four still-active starting quarterbacks with a 63.0 passer rating, 40.0 total QBR, 303 passing yards and two interceptions for the postseason, and he's completed 27-of-44 passes (61.4%) to teammates over his past two outings. Nevertheless, linebacker Fred Warner made it clear on Wednesday he and his teammates don't want to hear anything about Garoppolo potentially being a negative for the club ahead of the weekend. 

"Well, we're able to maintain trust in him because we keep winning," Warner said of Jimmy G, per David Bonilla of 49ers WebZone. "A quarterback, if you went down the list of the order of importance of positions on the team, quarterback's number one. A team's success is very heavily dependent on the quarterback position. So the fact that we're winning games is not just a surprise.

"Jimmy's playing great football, and it's a team game. It's not just all heavily dependent upon if Jimmy does well, then we're gonna win. No, he does exactly what we need him to, and he comes into work every single day, and it is the exact same person. He's not on social media looking at what everybody's tweeting about him. Who knows what he does outside of the building? I don't know. But I know, as soon as he comes inside this building, he's literally the same exact person every day, no matter what. I think that's what we all kind of respect the most. He always comes to work and is always trying to get better."

Garoppolo has been playing through the Grade 3 sprain of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right (throwing) thumb and chipped bone he suffered before Christmas, but the more recent sprain to his right shoulder wasn't mentioned on Wednesday's injury report.