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Now that the 2020 NFL regular season is over, the focus is on what should be a busy offseason for the San Francisco 49ers.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan and General John Lynch will have tough decisions to make with 38 players on new contracts, including alternate quarterbacks CJ Beathard and Nick Mullens.
The status of starter Jimmy Garoppolo entering the 2021 season has been a hot topic recently. The 29-year-old’s cap hit is expected to be just over $ 26 million next season, but the team could leave Garoppolo with minimal financial impact.
This doesn’t appear to be happening based on Shanahan’s comments about his and Lynch’s end-of-season media availability.
“We have a starting quarterback, but to know where these guys are going to be we have to step down on the guys we have or see if we can improve them through the draft or free agency. To do that you have to evaluate everything, so you know how to stack them and everything. So we’re definitely going to be watching a lot more stuff this year than we did last year.
With Garoppolo having missed most of the season with injuries, we’ve seen what Mullens and Beathard bring to the table. No quarterback has shown he can consistently play enough to win games and likely won’t be back with the team in 2021.
Garoppolo’s durability has been called into question after missing 23 games in the past three seasons, so adding a veteran option behind him makes sense if Shanahan and Lynch plan to keep him next season.
(You can hear Jimmy Garoppolo and John Lynch talking about the future in today’s Stats & Eggs podcast in the player below)
The Niners have gone 3-3 in the games Garoppolo has started this season, and he’s been pulled out of three of them due to injury. San Francisco has won 22 of the 30 games Jimmy G has started since his acquisition in 2017.
Garoppolo’s critics point out that he only had 27 total passing attempts in the two playoff games against the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers in 2019, which is why Shanahan didn’t. confidence in the quarterback.
But looking back on the 2019 regular season, Shanahan showed a lot of confidence in Garoppolo in the games the team needed to win to secure the NFC No.1 seed.
When the 49ers faced the Packers in Week 12 of the 2019 season, Garoppolo completed 14 of 20 passes for 253 yards, two touchdowns and no pick.
Against the New Orleans Saints, Garoppolo had 26 of 35 for 349 yards, four touchdowns and a pick. Then, in the 2019 regular season final against the Seattle Seahawks (a game that decided not only the division but also the home court advantage), Garoppolo finished 18 of 22 for 28 for 285 yards with no digits. business and with a rating of 118.7.
Passing the ball through the Minnesota and Green Bay Gorge worked perfectly, so Shanahan had no reason not to stick with it. Garoppolo’s fourth quarter performance in the Super Bowl was not good, but neither was the rest of the team. The defense gave up 190 total yards on three touchdowns in the last 15 minutes.
Garoppolo has his flaws and no one will take him for an NFL top five quarterback, but he has also proven that he can be a leader of a dominant team. The injury concerns are valid and if he can’t stay on the pitch next season it would make sense to leave him before the 2022 campaign.
Anything can happen between now and the start of training camp, but for now, it looks like Shanahan and Lynch are planning to bring Garoppolo back.
“I want Jimmy to come back to our core, good thing he’s not a free agent,” Shanahan said. “Of course I want our starting quarterback and all of our other starting players as well.”
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