To find the heart of Jimmy Garoppolo’s truest leadership moments, sometimes you have to understand what you’re not seeing, hearing or recording. Sometimes, as an outsider, you just have to search around and stumble upon the things Garoppolo sort of wishes nobody outside of the 49ers ever knew — the hidden outline of pure leadership presence.



So I asked a few questions around the locker room the last few weeks. There was something. I knew there had to be a factor or gesture that in its own quiet way defined Garoppolo’s subtle but undeniable guiding presence.



“He cares about the linemen, he cares about the receivers, the way that he goes about his business,” veteran receiver Emmanuel Sanders said last week when asked to describe Garoppolo’s leadership style.



Then Sanders casually brought something up — something I’d never heard and something that obviously is very meaningful to Sanders. Which seemed to shed...