The 49ers can’t make any changes to the quarterback. At least not with its owner. All signs after week 17 point to Garoppolo starting downtown to start next season. Even if that ends up being, San Francisco still has to head to the elephant in his quarterback room.
With Garoppolo’s injury history (he’s missed 25 of 57 possible starts since his first outing opportunity for the Patriots in 2016), the 49ers need to figure out a better contingency plan in case he gets hurt.
Teams generally don’t plan to drop their starting quarterback, but San Francisco has a list too good to let an injury from a quarterback who has already lost so much time derail his season. Nick Mullens is unable to keep the team afloat for more than one or two games. The same could be said of CJ Beathard.
The three players arrived in Santa Clara in 2017 and have been the trio of quarterbacks on the list since 2018. There has also been no serious competition for any of them.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters Monday in a video conference that this offseason would be different from the quarterback’s assessment perspective.
“Yes, we will look at it harder this year, but there is nothing to make a big statement or to tweet,” Shanahan said. “Last year I was very happy with our starting quarterback. I was very happy and content with our second chain. I was very happy and content with our third chain. They were all hired. We were good to go there.
Then, Shanahan offered an idea of the club’s strategy in the 2020 draft. Their selection closet was relatively bare, and they needed to do a couple of trades to finish the five-team selection. It looks like in a more normal year in which they entered the draft with seven or more selections, San Francisco could have drafted a quarterback for the second time in Shanahan’s tenure.
“Going into the low season, it looked like we had about three drafts,” Shanahan said of the draft of the 2020 process. “I think we had one in the first and then we didn’t have any until the fourth. So it’s, ‘Very well. We don’t even play quarterbacks. We are fine with ours. We don’t need to pay much attention to it. “
They ended up with two wide receivers, a tight end and a lineman on each side of the ball.
There was a brief moment during the offseason where rumors were towed about free agent quarterback and Tom Brady, a native of the Bay Area, who wanted to play for his hometown club. After internal discussions, Shanahan and CEO John Lynch chose to stay with Garoppolo.
“Of course, when there’s someone like the biggest player who’s ever played football, you definitely analyze it independently,” Shanahan said of Brady’s free agency. “Besides that, we weren’t because of our situation.”
Then, Shanahan discussed this low season and the incomparable dilemma of the 49ers quarterback. Last year he didn’t worry so much because Garoppolo was coming off the 16-game season, Nick Mullens looked like a capable No. 2 quarterback and Beathard was a good third choice.
Now both bookings will reach the free agency, forcing the 49ers to tackle the quarterback’s depth chart. Shanahan explained that while he was happy with Mullens and Beathard, the club will focus more on other options than they had last year.
“This year, our backup and our third at the moment, is restricted and unrestricted. So you’ll have to look at it all when you try to fill out a quarterback list, ”Shanahan said.“ We have an initial quarterback, but to know where these guys will be, we have to re-sign the guys we have or see if we can upgrade -through them through the project or the free agency. To do this, you need to evaluate everything so that you can know how to stack them and other things. So, definitely, we will study many more things this year than last year ”.
It’s hard to predict after the club’s struggles this year with secondary quarterbacks from Garoppolo that the 49ers would opt for the same group. In fact, they may end up looking for a substantial improvement that could eventually unseat Garoppolo, whose contract expires after the 2022 season.
The wheels spin in the San Francisco quarterback room for the first time in three years, and the way they navigate those waters could have an undulating effect that defines the club’s long-term future under center.