The San Francisco 49ers got off to a terrible start tothe NFL season and it didn’t take long before the fans started calling for Trey Lance to be the starter. But his inexperience and the team’s late-season turnaround quickly hushed those voices.
Even so, Jimmy Garoppolo’s play was often pointed out as the team’s weakest link and for very good reasons. Albeit he was statistically better in the regular season than the naked eye may tell, he still left a lot to be desired.
So, following their loss to the Los Angeles Rams and now that they enter a key offseason, Garoppolo and the Niners are working on a trade for the final year of his contract, something that’s far from a surprise at this point.
Jimmy Garoppolo Knew He Was Likely His Final Season With The Niners
“When things happened in the offseason, we made the trade and everything, picked Trey, it made things clear for me, honestly,” The QB explained “(It) gave me a clear course of what I wanted to do, what I wanted to accomplish this year. It honestly made things simpler in some ways, because it took the weight’s off my shoulders. ‘Now it’s just go play football and enjoy this last year with the guys and create as many relationships as I could.’ And that’s really what I tried to do this year and thought it worked out pretty well.”
“I just want to go to a place where they want to win. That’s really what I’m in this game for,” Garoppolo concluded. “I’m here to play football, here to win football games. As long as I got that and good people around me, I think the rest will take care of itself.”
Kyle Shanahan Respects Jimmy G But He Knows It’s Trey Lance’s Turn
Niners’ HC Kyle Shanahan has always had a lot of praise and positive things to say about Garoppolo. But as much as he likes him as a player and a person, he knows that Trey Lance is the future of the organization.
“I’ve got the ultimate respect for Jimmy, and I’m very excited about Trey. And that’s where we’re at right now,” the coachsaid. “Jimmy’s made it a lot harder, because he stayed healthy and he played like he is capable of playing, which is to me one of the better quarterbacks in this league. So we’re in a tough situation, not a tough situation, a situation where you have to make some tough decisions that won’t be easy, but I’m happy about that.”
Finding a trade partner willing to take on Garoppolo’s $26 million cap hit for next season will be a tough task, let alone a contending team. Whatever’s the case, he’s already played his final snap with the Bay area team.
