More Jimmy Garoppolo Fallout

Since the 49ers traded a 2018 second-round pick to the Patriots in exchange for quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, it has been widely assumed that San Francisco views Garoppolo as its quarterback of the future. However, Adam Schefter of ESPN.com suggests that isn’t necessarily the case.

As Schefter observes, the 49ers could end up with one of the top two picks in the 2018 draft, and they could choose to draft their future QB with that pick, or they could use some of their vast amount of cap space to sign a free agent signal-caller (read: Kirk Cousins). If they decide against moving forward with Garoppolo, who will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year, they could put the franchise tag on him and trade him. And, according to Schefter’s sources, San Francisco could get more than the second-round pick it dealt to New England if it were to go that route.

Even if what Schefter says is technically true, it is still difficult to envision Garoppolo somewhere other than San Francisco in 2018, and other writers do not mention the possibility that Tom Brady‘s former backup could be on the move again this offseason. For instance, Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports reports that contract talks between Garoppolo and the 49ers will begin soon, and Ian Rapoport of NFL.com says the 49ers’ acquisition of Garoppolo completely forecloses the chance they pursue Cousins. Rapoport adds that, while San Francisco brass does like Cousins, it chose to take the “sure thing” in Garoppolo now, rather than wait for the possibility Cousins that could be available.

Rapoport writes that Garoppolo and his former club could not come close in their negotiations on a new contract. Those talks were broached last spring, but Garoppolo would not accept a “backup-plus” contract then, and it does not sound as if he wavered from that stance in the subsequent months. As such, New England felt it had no other choice but to trade him and get a higher return that a 2019 compensatory selection, which is what it would have likely received if Garoppolo had simply signed elsewhere as an unrestricted free agent next offseason.

Rapoport also writes that the Patriots chose to keep Garoppolo for the first half of the season rather than trade him for an even larger return before the season began because they wanted insurance in case Brady should suffer a decline in play. Ben Volin of the Boston Globe, though, isn’t buying it. Volin says the notion that Brady’s play could have sharply fallen off over the first eight games of this season is nonsense, and “if the Patriots wanted to keep Garoppolo as insurance in case Brady got hurt, that should especially apply over the next eight games and playoffs. But it didn’t.”

Volin believes New England head coach Bill Belichick had every intention of keeping Garoppolo into 2018 and fully expected he would. However, it would have cost the Patriots about $23MM to keep Garoppolo via the franchise tag, and it would have been a clear sign to Brady that 2018 was his final year (and, as Rapoport says, the team will not tell Brady when to move on). Volin writes that trading Garoppolo was simply a case of business trumping football, though he is in agreement with other reports that New England did everything it could to steer Garoppolo towards a franchise that has a bright future as opposed to a team like the Browns, who have coveted Garoppolo for some time.