SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Thank goodness no other team in the NFL wanted Jimmy Garoppolo.
The 49ers needed him Sunday. They’ll need him for the next 15 games, too.
They might need him for another few seasons beyond that.
Trey Lance’s first season as the 49ers’ starting quarterback is over after five quarters, as he broke his right ankle on a first-quarter running play during a 27-7 win over the Seahawks Sunday at Levi’s Stadium.
The Niners’ playoff hopes didn’t evaporate on Sunday, as they did in September 2018 when Garoppolo tore his ACL at the end of a Week 3 game against the Chiefs. No, because Garoppolo is still, improbably, on the team, the Niners have a chance to play deep into January.
But while the Lance injury might not hurt the team dramatically now, it puts all of the 49ers’ long-term plans into a blender.
This season was all about Lance. That’s still true even though he won’t play again in 2022.
Lance is the future of the Niners’ franchise. At least he should be, as he was the No. 3 overall in the 2021 NFL Draft and the Niners traded away three first-round picks for the right to select him.
He was the present of the franchise, too. Until Sunday, at least.
The Niners went all-in on Lance when they picked him.
And in a few months, the Niners will have to decide if they’ll double down on that bet before Lance’s pivotal third NFL season. They’ll have to make that bet without the benefit of looking at their own cards.
You can be bullish or bearish on Lance’s potential, but more than a season in, no one knows if he can win in the NFL.
When the young quarterback returns to the field in 2023, he will do so without having started and finished back-to-back games in the NFL. He’ll have played only one full football season — at the second tier of the NCAA’s Division 1, no less — since he graduated from his small-town Minnesota high school.
Just as there was no precedent for the Niners keeping Garoppolo on their roster as a backup quarterback — despite him being the starting quarterback for the team in last season’s NFC Championship Game — there is no blueprint for a starting quarterback being successful in this league having played so little football.
This is a position that demands both talent and experience. Lance can only boast the former. This season was all about giving him the latter.
Shanahan said he’s not aware of a career analogous to Lance’s.
“It’s unfortunate,” the coach said. “We were really hoping to see a lot of him this year. But if anyone can do it, it’s him.”
The Niners were going to find out in 2022 if Lance was or wasn’t the kind of player who could carry a franchise for years to come — if he was the kind of player they could envision winning a Super Bowl in this era of superhuman quarterbacks.
If Lance was, indeed, that kind of quarterback, the Niners would have possessed an MVP-caliber player playing on a cheap contract for at least two more years. The team’s Super Bowl window would be wide open and they could spend to open it wider.
If he wasn’t, the Niners could have hedged on their all-in bet and moved on from Lance, either in commitment or by trading him.
In the wild new NFL, top-tier quarterbacks move every offseason. Maybe the Niners can get one this upcoming offseason.
Or maybe they’ll pass.
Have they seen enough that they can remain fully committed to Lance? If not, can they find a quarterback with greater upside than Garoppolo?
How could you possibly make that decision after four NFL starts?
The 49ers are flying blind here, and what they do before next season will likely define the next five years of Niners football and Shanahan’s tenure time as head coach. This is a league where quarterbacks and head coaches define success.
Knowing that, picking Lance was a big, grand, bold experiment for the 49ers. It forced us all to look big picture with the team while maintaining high short-term expectations.
The Niners believed with risk could come reward when they acquired Lance.
And so far, they have only experienced the former. The latter might never come.
So what comes next?
For the next 15 weeks, Garoppolo will be back at the helm of the Niners’ offense. If Sunday’s win over the Seahawks was predictive, we should expect the same ol’ Jimmy G — good but not good enough. And we’ll probably see some snaps with third-string quarterback Brock Purdy — the last pick in the 2022 NFL Draft — as well. You just can’t trust Garoppolo to stay healthy.
Remember, there’s a reason the Niners moved on from Garoppolo and made Lance their starting quarterback: They didn’t believe Garoppolo could lead the team to a Super Bowl win. That belief was backed up by his performance in the fourth quarters of Super Bowl LIV and last season’s NFC Championship Game. It’s a vote of no confidence echoed by 31 other NFL teams this past offseason, when the Niners tried to trade No. 10.
Instead of releasing Garoppolo when no one bit on a trade, San Francisco instead opted to restructure the quarterback’s contract and keep him as Lance’s backup.
“This is the reason you buy insurance… Jimmy [Garoppolo] was kind of our insurance policy in case something like this happened,” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said Sunday.
Garoppolo is a one-year stopgap, though — his contract expires at the end of the season.
So unless Garoppolo shocks us all and takes the 49ers over the top, this whole season will be played in vain. Yes, even if they make the playoffs.
After that, it’s decision time.
And what a tough decision it will be.
