Throughout the NFL offseason, The Touchback will take a look at some of the best fantasy football seasons you don’t remember. Today, we are looking at Jeff Garcia and his outstanding 2000 season. Click here to read about the other best fantasy football seasons you don’t remember.
No one really expected Jeff Garcia to ball out the way he did in 2000. The San Francisco 49ers gave him ten starts in 1999 after a concussion essentially ended Steve Young’s career early that season. The results weren’t great early on and he was benched for Steve Stenstrom who was worse.
Garcia was handed the starting role once more. He performed better to close out the season, but the 49ers still drafted two quarterbacks in the offseason – Giovanni Carmazzi and Tim Rattay. How San Francisco drafted a pair of quarterbacks in 2000 with neither being Tom Brady will forever be a mystery.
But this story isn’t about that. We are here to talk about Jeff Garcia and his amazing 2000 fantasy football season. The statline was incredible finishing with 31 touchdowns against 10 interceptions to go with 4,278 passing yards. He also scrambled for 414 yards and four rushing touchdowns to finish with 340 fantasy points.
To add some context to just how impressive Garcia was in Y2K, the only quarterbacks to have scored more fantasy points than him in a season before that were Dan Marino, Randall Cunningham and Steve Young. And no other passer would beat the mark until Dante Culpepper and Peyton Manning did it in 2004. Of course, 340 points from a quarterback seems pedestrian by today’s standards.
| Position Finish | Overall Finish (Standard/PPR) | |
| 2000 | QB1 | 2/3 |
| 2020 | QB8 | 8/10 |
Jeff Garcia in 2000: Good player or garbage time stats?
Despite Jeff Garcia putting up numbers in 2000, the 49ers finished the season 6-10. So, was he a good player or was this a case of garbage time stat padding? All things considered, it was mostly the former.
San Francisco was terrible on defense in 2000. They gave up the third most yards and fourth most points that season. The 49ers surrendered 30+ points in ten games and couldn’t stop anyone part from shutting out a Chicago Bears team lead by Cade McNown in week 16.
On the other side of the ball, San Francisco was fourth in total yards and sixth in points scored. They also committed the fewest turnovers in the NFL in 2000. And Garcia’s numbers weren’t inflated by garbage time since the 49ers entered halftime trailing by more than 12 points on only three occasions during the season.
Present day comparison
This is going to sound crazy if you didn’t see Garcia play, but the best present-day comparison is Deshaun Watson. They are both good all-around quarterbacks who were strong rushers, but not defined by that skill. Accuracy is another similarity Garcia and Watson share. Obviously, they are built differently, and Garcia isn’t the athlete Watson is, but the skillsets do overlap for the most part.
