Jimmy Garoppolo is 2-0 as the 49ers starting quarterback. Does it matter?

Jimmy Garoppolo has seized his chance to earn the 49ers’ starting quarterback job. With two wins in two starts, he’s already got twice the victories any other starter in scarlet and gold has earned this fall. But are wins over the 4-9 Bears and Texans, two teams jockeying for a top-five pick in 2018 draft, enough to tell us anything about whether or not the young passer can be a franchise cornerstone?

San Francisco paid handsomely for the privilege of rostering Garoppolo for the season’s final nine weeks. General manager John Lynch sent the Patriots a second-round pick — currently projected to fall somewhere near the 35th overall selection — for the right to be the first team to offer the 26-year-old quarterback a monster contract in the 2018 offseason, when he’s set to be a free agent. So far, the measured gamble has paid off, as Garoppolo has remained undefeated as a starting quarterback in the NFL.

Getting a moribund 49ers team to back-to-back wins is an accomplishment; the franchise hasn’t won two straight games since Nov. 2014, back when Jim Harbaugh was just a name at the top of Michigan’s wish list and not yet the scourge of the Big Ten. But while Garoppolo has been successful when it comes to wins, he hasn’t lit the world on fire behind center.

San Francisco went all in on its 2017 rebuild, cleaning out a roster that went 2-14 the prior year. The 49ers jettisoned all three of last year’s QBs (Colin Kaepernick, Blaine Gabbert, Thad Lewis) and brought in trustworthy veteran free agents like Pierre Garcon and Kyle Juszczyk at high costs to build a nurturing environment. Signing Brian Hoyer and waiting until the third round to draft a quarterback — less-than-prolific Iowa passer C.J. Beathard — signaled low expectations for the season outside of laying a foundation for the future.

Adding Garoppolo and releasing Hoyer served as the concrete for that base. The Niners gave him a long lead time to learn his new team’s system. He spent nearly four weeks on the bench before a Beathard injury unleashed him on the NFL late in a 24-13 loss to the Seahawks. The strategy has paid off; Garoppolo has stood tall when his team has needed him most, throwing for 627 yards in his two starts:

More importantly, Garoppolo overcame adversity in each of his wins with San Francisco. Against Chicago, he engineered a 14-play, 86-yard drive in the final minute that ended with a game-winning field goal with four seconds to play. On Sunday, the Texans took a 16-13 lead in the third quarter before back-to-back scoring drives pushed the Niners firmly back in front.

The one concern is Garoppolo’s inability to find the end zone with his new team. Excepting his mop-up duty against Seattle, he’s got just one touchdown pass and a pair of interceptions in his San Francisco tenure. The team has scored just 20.5 points per game with him as the starter — a mark that would be 20th in the league stretched out over a full season.

Back to that last number. Garoppolo may not be scoring at an above-average rate for the rest of the league, but he’s still significantly better than the Hoyer/Beathard combination had been. With that pair behind center, the 49ers scored just 16.4 points per contest. They threw for an average of 243 yards per game. Garoppolo averaged 313.5 in his two starts so far.

That’s a small sample size, but it’s encouraging. The thing that makes Garoppolo’s passing yardage stand out — and his lack of touchdowns not especially troublesome — is his supporting cast.

He’s got a solid but not spectacular running game with Carlos Hyde and Matt Breida. Garcon played just eight games this season before landing on injured reserve with a bad neck, missing his new QB’s debut entirely. In his stead, Marquise Goodwin, who had 780 receiving yards in four seasons with Buffalo, has emerged as the team’s No. 1 receiver. While he’s been a solid deep threat (19.3 yards per reception), he’s caught only 50 percent of his targets this year.

Garoppolo’s other wideouts and tight ends include Trent Taylor, George Kittle, Aldrick Robinson, and Kendrick Bourne. Fullback Juszczyk, who hadn’t done much this year after signing as a free agent, came up with his best game of the season this week with a three-catch, 64-yard outing.

But with 10 receiving scores in 13 games, no team has scored fewer passing touchdowns in 2017 than the Niners. As much consternation as the Jets’ WR corps got this fall, the 49ers group may actually have less name recognition. Garoppolo has been slow to find the end zone in his new home, but that’s the franchise’s fault — not his.

A big part of New England’s willingness to deal Garoppolo is that his looming free agency will make him an expensive luxury. The fourth-year QB will be able to sign with any team he likes this spring, which makes the 49ers trade for him a calculated risk. However, several factors will give the franchise the inside track toward keeping him.

Not only does San Francisco have the advantage of being a familiar option that’s been able to woo him throughout the season, but the club also will have the opportunity to retain him using its franchise tag if the two sides can’t come to a long-term agreement. Much like another long-rumored Niners target, Kirk Cousins, the team can buy another year of observation at the cost of a one-year deal worth the average salary of the top five highest-paid QBs in 2018. In 2017, that number was a shade under $21.3 million.

That’s likely the last option the team would prefer to take with the 26-year-old. After two wins and an average more than 300 passing yards per start, Garoppolo is on pace to outgrow the mold cast by other former Patriots backups and step into his own as a quarterback. The 49ers would be happy to pay for that. With a projected $110 million in cap space next offseason, more than any other team in the NFL, they shouldn’t have a problem pinching pennies to make it happen.