Garoppolo not right QB to compete for Super Bowl rings
The 49ers cannot keep quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
If you learned anything from watching the first round of the NFL playoffs this past weekend, let it be that.
Don’t worry about the teams that made the tournament, look at the teams that through a bye or a win will play in the second round. There’s a trend, and it’s bad news for the 49ers.
There’s no doubt that quarterback is the most important position in North American professional sports and the teams playing in the divisional round have one of two kinds of quarterbacks.
The first is a quarterback on a rookie contract. These players, like Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, Buffalo’s Josh Allen, and even Cleveland’s Baker Mayfield, are artificially cheap, allowing their teams to use the saved money to build exceptional teams around them.
Baltimore has a Super Bowlcaliber defense. Buffalo was able to add Stefon Diggs to catch passes this past offseason. The Browns built an offensive line capable of making Mayfield look good.
Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes is part of this camp as well. He might have signed the largest contract tin NFL history before this season started, but that deal doesn’t start until season. This year, his salary accounts for 2.4 percent of the cap.
When those rookie contracts expire and new, market-value quarterback deals are handed out, tough decisions will be made. The team around those quarterbacks will dissolve:
Good players will leave for more money and no team can draft well enough to replace every established NFL player with a cheap youngster who provides equal or better on-field value.
It’s upon those quarterbacks to then pick up the slack — to be truly elite.
To be like the other class of quarterbacks that advanced to the divisional round, the surefire Hall of Famers, the G.O. A.T. Class.
These guys might be paid well, but they’re unquestionably worth the investment.
Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers — these guys know exactly what they’re doing come playoff time, and two of the three (Brees is the exception) have the ability to lift up their teams in the crunchiest of crunch times.
And while Brees might not be that guy anymore, the Saints have spent money to build a team around him like was on a rookie deal. Their day of reckoning will come — they’re estimated to be roughly $100 million over the salary cap for next year — but it is not here yet. The Saints are arguably the best drafting team in the NFL, so they still have one more go before the bill is due, with interest.
The only exception to this trend is the Rams, who beat the Seahawks on Saturday. They paid quarterback Jared Goff but, like the Saints, they haven’t stopped spending, as they are tacitly aware that he cannot elevate his team. The Rams aren’t in as deep a cap hell as the Saints (they’re only an estimated $21 million over the cap for 2021), but Goff was their last first round pick and they lack a top-32 selection this year as well. Their day of reckoning isn’t far away, either.
But the 49ers’ day of reckoning? It’s already here.
Garoppolo isn’t cheap. But he also isn’t going to be competing for the MVP award. Something has to give. Garoppolo will account for 15 percent of the 49ers’ salary cap next year, one percent more than Goff accounted for with the Rams this past season. And the Niners have already seen the roster deterioration around No. 10. All-Pro DeForest Buckner plays for the Colts now because of Garoppolo’s contract. If the Niners stick with Garoppolo, more key players are going to leave Santa Clara. There just won’t be enough money to keep them.
(San Francisco could re-structure Garoppolo to lower this number and keep some free agents around, but that would lock the quarterback in for several years, something the team didn’t want to do last year and will not want to do this year.)
The indecision on Garoppolo — and until they either extend him or cut him, it’s just that — is going to leave the 49ers in no-man’s land.
With him, they’re not good enough to win the Super Bowl. They put together one of the great defenses in modern NFL history in 2019 and their offense had the game’s best play-caller, an excellent offensive line, and plenty of skill players. It still wasn’t enough to beat Kansas City.
At best, with Garoppolo at the helm, the 49ers will be like the Rams: smart enough to stick around, but not capable of being serious contenders. Ask the Seahawks, whose only Super Bowl win came with Russell Wilson on a rookie contract, how doing that year-in, year-out, feels.
I know, for a fact, that consistently above average isn’t an acceptable outcome to 49ers fans, nor should it be acceptable to the organization as a whole. Let Jacksonville or the Chargers have that nonsense — I was under the impression that the 49ers are about winning titles.
And if they couldn’t do that with Garoppolo last February, they’re not going to do it moving forward.
The Niners have a chance to get young at the position this April. The No. 12 pick should be high enough to land one of the draft’s top quarterbacks.
They could also use that pick to try to get a clearcut upgrade to Jimmy G in a trade. Matt Stafford might not be a member of the G.O.A.T class, but he’s 33 years old and No. 16 on the NFL’s all-time passing yards list. Matt Ryan, 36, is ninth. There’s plenty of speculation that Deshaun Watson, a three-time Pro Bowler at age 25, is interested in being traded too. I doubt that happens, but he’d unquestionably be an upgrade, even though he’s already on his second contract.
Regardless of whether the Niners go young or get old, the fact remains that they cannot remain the same. They are paying toplevel money to a quarterback who cannot provide top-level production.
And with the salary cap staying flat or perhaps even dropping next season, that formula alone is enough to knock the 49ers well out of the class of true Super Bowl contenders for 2021.