Why 49ers had to make trade to find Garoppolo’s successor
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 this is the biggest one yet.
And it all but assures that Jimmy Garoppolo’s time as the 49ers’ starting quarterback is nearing its end.
It’s a move the Niners had to make, too.
By trading away three first-round picks to move up to No. 3 in this year’s NFL Draft, the 49ers are going to go all-in on the third-best quarterback in this class.
Whether that is BYU’s Zach Wilson or Ohio State’s Justin Fields will be determined by Shanahan’s former defensive coordinator, Robert Saleh, now the New York Jets head coach. The Jets hold the No. 2 overall pick. Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence will go No. 1 to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
But after making George Kittle the highest-paid tight end in the history of the sport and Trent Williams the highest-paid left tackle in the history of the sport, and with contract extensions — likely also records — for Fred Warner and Nick Bosa looming, 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, despite the fact that extending his contract would have likely allowed them to keep DeForest Buckner and others.
And you can’t blame the Niners for not doing it. They didn’t trust Garoppolo to stay healthy or 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 will make those mega deals already on the books and those yet to come tenable.
But that decision says more about Garoppolo than the soon-to-be rookie quarterback.
And my bet is that the Niners won’t be losing that much production at the quarterback position amid the transition, either.
The Niners passively agreed by making this trade Friday.
There’s a risk in this move. Big risk. They’re allin on a kid, now. What if Wilson or Fields (it’s most likely Fields) is a bust?
But when discussing that, you have to acknowledge the risk in continuing to ride with Garoppolo, who has missed nearly half of the Niners’ regular-season games since he signed what was, at the time, the largest contract in NFL history; a quarterback who was not allowed to pass in the 2019 playoffs and melted down in Super Bowl LIV.
The big question that loomed over the Niners for months — years? — has now been answered: We know now what they are doing with Garoppolo. They’re moving on from him.
But now there’s another big question: When will they do it?
Before this trade, the 49ers had the seventhbest odds to win the Su
per Bowl this season at most sportsbooks, holding 14-to-1 odds. That’s a damn good team.
And those odds included Garoppolo at quarterback.
Can a rookie take over in 2021 and beat the Seahawks and Rams in the NFC West, much less the Packers and Buccaneers in the NFC West?
Or will the Niners keep Garoppolo around in a mentor role this season?
The worst-kept secret in the NFL is that the Patriots would love to bring Garoppolo back. What would New England pay to have him now, as opposed to picking him up at the end of the season when the Niners would surely cut him?
Would anyone else (his hometown Chicago Bears, perhaps?) be interested in making a move?
Maybe the Niners can recoup one of those firstround picks they lost Friday.
Regardless, Shanahan and Lynch need to 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.