SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- For a fleeting moment Sunday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was back in his early days at Rolling Meadows High in Illinois, chasing down a ball carrier in an attempt to make a potential game-saving tackle.

“Yeah, went back to my linebacker days, I guess,” Garoppolo said.

Make no mistake, Garoppolo would much have preferred to avoid any throwback to his days playing defense. In this instance, the situation called for it after Garoppolo threw what looked like a backbreaking interception to allow the Detroit Lions a chance to erase the Niners’ 17-point lead and send them to an 0-2 start.

While Garoppolo made the tackle, it turned out not to matter. When Garoppolo looked back up the field, a flag had been thrown for defensive holding, negating the interception and sending the Niners to a harrowing 30-27 victory.

“[I was] very happy,” Garoppolo said. “I didn’t see what happened with the flag and everything, but yeah, very happy.”

The feeling was a vast improvement over the disappointment of a series of near misses in Week 1 against the Vikings. In that game, Garoppolo threw three interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown and posted the worst start of his career, statistically.

It was also the first of Garoppolo’s short career as a starter after winning his first seven. It also begged the obvious question: how would Garoppolo bounce back from his first taste of adversity as a starter?

Earlier this week, coach Kyle Shanahan lauded Garoppolo for showing up to team facilities the day after the game and acting just as he would after a victory.

“You never know until you go through that with guys," Shanahan said. "Jimmy has had a lot of success in the games he’s played. But, he’s a guy you don’t have to beat around the bush with. Even talking to him on the plane, he [knew] the plays he missed and you don’t have to sit there and talk very long about it. … You can be real with him.”

Garoppolo even channeled former coach Bill Belichick by proclaiming the Niners were “on to Detroit” during his weekly Wednesday meeting with the media.

On Sunday, Garoppolo was 18-of-26 for 206 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions for a passer rating of 118.4. That passer rating was the highest of his tenure with the Niners and second-highest of his career.

Just as Garoppolo’s numbers from last week might have been a bit misleading in how bad they were, Sunday’s were also a bit off in how good they looked. After a hot start in which he completed eight of his first nine passes for 98 yards and a touchdown, the passing game bogged down in the second half.

Garoppolo struggled to get the ball out in timely fashion and was sacked six times for a loss of 50 yards. Three of those sacks came on the Niners’ first two red zone trips, again leaving them to settle for field goals on both drives.

“We’ve got to beat man coverage, that’s for sure,” Shanahan said. “I thought we could have done a better job today of beating man coverage, but on a number of those, I thought we had to get rid of it.”

Garoppolo, who earned a reputation for his quick release and decision-making in his final five starts last year, didn’t do that against the Lions. It left observers to wonder if he was choosing to hang on to the ball in lieu of trying to make plays down the field so he could avoid interceptions.

“It’s always on your mind you don’t want to throw interceptions, but there’s a happy medium,” Garoppolo said. “It’s like everything with being a quarterback. It’s about decision-making and putting your team in the right spot to be successful.”

While the passing game struggled to find rhythm, the running game helped pick up the slack.

Matt Breida, Alfred Morris and Garoppolo combined for 190 yards on 28 carries, including Breida’s 66-yard touchdown run. That production teed up Garoppolo and Shanahan to do what they do best with Garoppolo finishing 7-of-9 for a career-high 123 yards on play-action passes, according to ESPN Stats & Information tracking.

Two weeks into the season, it’s no secret that this 49ers team will go as far as Garoppolo can lead them. While his Sunday performance fell short of some of his monster games at the end of last season, the Niners can take solace in the fact that others stepped up to help and in their unrelenting belief that Garoppolo is only going to get better.

“Jimmy is a hell of a player,” tight end George Kittle said. “He makes us a very good team in my eyes. Jimmy had a great week and like Joe [Staley] said, he’s going to throw an interception a couple times, but there’s going to be a game where he’s going to come out with five touchdowns and 400 yards and we’re going to go through every up and down with him.”