49ers roster: Jimmy Garoppolo and his uncertain future
By Peter Panacy
Why 49ers ultimately cut bait with Jimmy Garoppolo in 2022
It’s in the 49ers’ best interest to have Jimmy Garoppolo healthy again, and they’re likely banking on at least one of the other 31 projected starting quarterbacks either flaming out between now and Week 1 or suffering some sort of injury.
Remember, back in 2016, the Philadelphia Eagles traded their own lame-duck quarterback, Sam Bradford, to the Minnesota Vikings for a first-round pick after the Vikings lost quarterback Teddy Bridgewater to a serious knee injury during offseason workouts.
Nothing like that is guaranteed to happen, though, and time is running out for the Niners to make a decision.
A trade or a cut would free up more than $25 million in cap space, which is money San Francisco will desperately need to assist with lucrative extensions for top players like wide receiver Deebo Samuel and EDGE Nick Bosa, even if there’s projected room underneath what’s expected to be a massive cap increase in 2023. Carryover matters, and the 49ers will want to generate some of that now.
And while the Niners could feasibly engineer a good deal of cap space by asking Jimmy G to take a pay cut while keeping him on the roster, that still wouldn’t solve an inevitable headache of keeping both him and Trey Lance at the same time.
No, San Francisco likely doesn’t want to do that again. Garoppolo might not want to go through that situation either.
So, what would Jimmy G ideally like to do, and where might he go in 2022 and beyond?