The 49ers did not expect Jimmy Garoppolo to be on their roster at the end of March. But the quarterback roulette wheel has stopped spinning and Garoppolo, recovering from an unexpected shoulder surgery, hasn’t gone anywhere.
Over the past two days, the braintrust of John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan (and Jed York, too) have done their darndest to give the situation a lozenge-like, soothing coating.
San Francisco is currently slated to pay three quarterbacks $36.7 million, two of whom will not be starting. The 49ers can cut Garoppolo at any point before the start of the season, which would save at minimum, $18-plus million.
He has $7.5 million guaranteed for injury, but there’s an offset, which means that if another team pays Garoppolo $4 million after a cut, the 49ers would only eat $3.5 million of that guarantee.
But that’s sort of moot, at least at the moment.
The 49ers are not cutting Garoppolo until it’s the only option on the table. Kyle Shanahan said as much to reporters on Tuesday morning, at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.
Shanahan said he believed the 49ers were going to get a deal done until Garoppolo had shoulder surgery.
“I think the situation is clear,” Shanahan said. “We were trying to make a move to add some draft picks and get them back and I think we were pretty close to it. Then Jimmy ended up getting the surgery and that changes things.”
That surgery came up multiple times, with Shanahan indicating in fairly explicit terms that the surgical repair of the torn capsule in Garoppolo’s throwing shoulder is the main reason he’s still on the roster.
“Everything’s good with Jimmy,” Shanahan said. “I think everyone knows he got the surgery which made this situation a little bit tougher. Anytime anyone gets a surgery, especially on their throwing shoulder, teams are going to be a little more nervous in what they want to offer and things like that and I think that did put it on hold. But we’re alright with that. We went through the free agent period, so we had to make some adjustments to do some things, but we’ve got him on the books right now and we’ll keep it that way until something else can improve us.”
With the 49ers declining to cut Garoppolo, they also declined to reap the rewards of the immediate cap savings a cut would have provided, as outlined above.
Instead, they opted to restructure the contracts of Dee Ford, George Kittle and Arik Armstead to get under the salary cap and to add a handful of free agents, namely Charvarius Ward and a trio of special teams aces.
Shanahan said he will probably never name a starter but indicated that the 49ers intend to make sure Trey Lance’s development isn’t affected by Garoppolo remaining on the roster. Garoppolo won’t be able to throw during OTAs and it’s unclear at what point in training camp he will start again.
But he also said the 49ers won’t just “get rid of a good quarterback because we have other quarterbacks on the roster.”
“Jimmy’s done a great job for us,” Shanahan said. “We’ve brought Trey here to be that eventually and I think that’ll be sooner than later but when Jimmy gets his surgery and we can’t upgrade our team by getting some good picks until people feel good about that, I’m alright with that. We’re not just getting rid of him to get rid of him… we’re going to wait to see what helps the roster the most.”
He also indicated that if Garoppolo stayed on the roster through training camp, it’s a situation that “makes everyone better” vis-a-vis competition and that while Lance “wasn’t ready to beat [Garoppolo] out last year, it will definitely be closer to that this year if it happens.”
The priority, clearly, is to see if a trade can be found for Garoppolo once he’s able to throw again and to work with Lance diligently all offseason.
