Kurtenbach: Trade means Jimmy G’s time is nearly up
Well, it was fun while it lasted, Jimmy, but the 49ers are clearly moving on.
The 49ers have made some big trades in John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan’s tenure as general manager and head coach, but the one they made Friday is the biggest yet.
And it says that starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is not part of the 49ers’ long-term plans.
That’s a bold departure. But it’s a move the Niners had to make, too.
By trading away three first-round picks to move up to No. 3 in next month’s NFL Draft, the 49ers are going to go all-in on a quarterback.
They won’t get the best quarterback in the draft. Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence will go No. 1 to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The 49ers will get either BYU’s Zach Wilson or Ohio State’s Justin Fields, and even that choice won’t be theirs. The New York Jets, coached by former 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh, have the No. 2 pick.
But after making George Kittle the highest-paid tight end in NFL history and Trent Williams the highest-paid left tackle in NFL history, the 49ers had to make the hard choice that every successful NFL team has to make: Are
you going to pay the quarterback, or are you going to pay everyone else?
The Niners have made it clear over the last two offseasons that they would not be giving Garoppolo a raise. They held their stance on that even though an extension for Garoppolo might have enabled them to retain other key players such as former top 10 pick DeForest Buckner, a former All-Pro defensive lineman.
And you can’t blame the Niners for holding the line on Garoppolo. They didn’t trust him to stay healthy or to perform at a Pro Bowl level when he was on the field.
They couldn’t keep passing the buck, avoiding the confrontation. Next offseason, even with a likely spike in the salary cap, a decision was going to be forced upon them.
So they decided not to prolong the inevitable.
By selecting a quarterback at No. 3, the 49ers will have cheap labor at the most important position for the next five seasons. It allows them to pay the market rate to the great players on their team.
But the decision to go young says more about Garoppolo than the soonto-be rookie quarterback.
My bet is that the Niners won’t be losing that much production at the quarterback position amid the transition, either. By making this trade Friday, the Niners tacitly agreed.
There’s a risk in this move. A big risk. Whether they end up with Wilson or Fields — I want Fields — they’re all-in on a kid now. What if the kid is a bust?
But when entertaining that possibility, you also need to acknowledge the risk in continuing to ride with Garoppolo. He has missed nearly half of the Niners’ regular-season games since he signed what was, at the time, the largest contract in NFL history. He is a quarterback who wasn’t trusted to throw the ball in the 2019 playoffs, and he melted down in Super Bowl LIV.
The big question that loomed over the Niners for months has now been answered: Now we know what the 49ers are doing with Garoppolo. They’re moving on from him.
The only remaining question: When?
Before this trade, the 49ers had the seventhbest odds to win the Super Bowl next season, holding 14-to-1 odds at most sportsbooks. That’s a damn good team.
And those odds included Garoppolo at quarterback.
Would the 49ers entrust a rookie to take over in 2021 and get them past the Seahawks and Rams — and the Packers and the Buccaneers — on the road to the Super Bowl?
Would they keep Garoppolo on for one more season, either as the starter or as an expensive backup to the kid in training?
It’s no secret that the New England Patriots would love to have Garoppolo back; they traded him to the 49ers in 2017 for a second-round draft pick. New England could wait until the end of next season and get Garoppolo for nothing, assuming the 49ers cut him. But what would the Patriots give in trade to have him right now?
Would anyone else — his hometown Chicago Bears, perhaps — be interested in making a trade?
Maybe the Niners can recoup one of those firstround picks they traded away Friday.
Regardless, Shanahan and Lynch should be applauded for making the bold decision. They took stock of all their options, all their possible paths moving forward, and decided that continuing to ride with Garoppolo was the one least likely to succeed.
After years of passing on quarterbacks early in the draft — Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes, specifically — the Niners found themselves in a position where they could no longer afford to do that.
A new era is coming. The only question is how quickly it will begin.