Jimmy Garoppolo on Tuesday sounded like a player with a firm understanding of where things are headed.
His time with the 49ers is likely over, with his last pass getting intercepted at the end of Sunday's NFC Championship game against the Rams, and with his relationship with general manager John Lynch, head coach Kyle Shanahan and the organization in a seemingly healthy place.
Garoppolo confirmed the two sides will work together to find a trade partner to determine his next destination, while the 49ers will move forward with Trey Lance as the full-time starter next September.
"I think they're trying to do the best for me. I'm trying to do the best for them," Garoppolo said in likely his final news conference with the team. "We're working together and really haven't made too much progress on it, but I think things will start happening here pretty quickly."
It was never a secret where things were headed. Shanahan and Lynch decided to invest three first-round picks in Lance last spring to eventually move away from Garoppolo, a mid-to-high-level starting quarterback, depending on the week, who had a troublesome injury history that derailed the better portions of 2018 and 2020, sandwiching a Super Bowl appearance.
Shanahan and Lynch watched quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Matthew Stafford, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Burrow and others elevate their teams with elite skill sets, which led to targeting a talented prospect like Lance. Reports surfaced throughout the year indicating the plan was to move to Lance next season, while Shanahan, Lynch and Garoppolo would allude to that reality on the record without so much as confirming it.
"When things happened in the offseason, we made the trade and everything, picked Trey, it made things clear for me, honestly," Garoppolo said. "(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."
Garoppolo's track record
What Garoppolo did this season in the circumstances — quarterback the team through a must-win Week 18 bout against the Rams, winning two playoff games on the road and having a 10-point fourth quarter lead minutes away from a second Super Bowl appearance in three years, while playing with a painful thumb injury on his throwing hand and sprained throwing shoulder — is commendable.
He stood tall even after the 49ers began 3-5 and held off his talented replacement to make an improbable playoff run. He orchestrated the game-winning drive in Week 18, which became a defining moment, and helped the 49ers get in range for the game-winning field goal in frigid Green Bay in the divisional round. Also commendable.
Which is how Garoppolo's 49ers legacy should be defined.
"I never try to make things too big in my head. Just try to stay in the moment, take it for what it is," Garoppolo said. "It seemed like every game this year, especially the ones when we got to the 3-5 point, each game carried some significant weight to it. But that's what makes for a good year. Makes for exciting football for the fans to watch. Obviously as players as coaches, we're living it, so it's always crazy for us. But that's the NFL season. It's never easy. It's almost when it's more difficult like this, it makes the year more memorable."
There are parallels to be made to Alex Smith, once a hated draft bust fans would boo off the field, to a significant piece of a contending team. Now, like Smith in the winter of 2013, Garoppolo is set to get traded to another team hoping to have similar playoff success the 49ers enjoyed after the 2019 and 2021 seasons.
A good 49er
There's little doubt Garoppolo was a good 49er. He joined the team in 2017 and won his first five starts, taking a team that began Shanahan's tenure 0-9 to a finishing mark of 6-10. Garoppolo signed his five-year, $137.5 million contract the following February, and made it through three seasons of the contract before the 49ers decided to go another direction after the fourth.
The 49ers finished 35-16 in Garoppolo's starts, including 4-2 in the playoffs. They were 8-28 with other quarterbacks, mostly of the backup variety, including Nick Mullens (5-11), C.J. Beathard (2-10), Brian Hoyer (0-6) and Lance (1-1).
Those statistics are somewhat skewed by the fact Nick Bosa joined the team in 2019 taking the defense to entirely different level, while the entire roster was saddled with injuries in 2018, when Garoppolo was out with a torn ACL, and 2020, when Bosa tore his. Too often, the 49ers' record with Garoppolo is used as an apples-to-apples comparison while there were other circumstances the team was dealing with that led to losses outside of Garoppolo's absences.
Garoppolo was a key figure in the 49ers turnaround after years of struggle. He gave credibility to the team's quarterback situation after the departure of Colin Kaepernick. Garoppolo went further with San Francisco than the Vikings ever did with Kirk Cousins, whom Shanahan has said was the target in the 2018 offseason (and the reason he passed on Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson in the 2017 draft).
Garoppolo is signed for 2022 with a $24.2 million base salary with bonuses that would make his cap hit close to $27 million. It would seem logical that a trade would lead to a new contract with his new club, giving Garoppolo multi-year security and more guaranteed money while the team would likely shrink his cap hit for next season.
Garoppolo would make sense for any team with a strong roster in need of a veteran signal caller — the Steelers and Buccaneers stand out, as would the Saints, Washington and Broncos — that could make up for Garoppolo's deficiencies with a strong foundation, like the 49ers mostly did as contenders in 2019 and 2021.
"I just want to go to a place where they want to win. That's really what I'm in this game for," Garoppolo said. "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."
Trading Garoppolo
Though while Garoppolo made it clear where things stood, the 49ers brass were predictably a little more murky.
"I've got the ultimate respect for Jimmy, and I'm very excited about Trey. And that's where we're at right now," Shanahan said. "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."
The decision to trade Garoppolo has been made, by nearly every account, though Shanahan is still keeping his cards close.
When he's traded, Garoppolo should be remembered fondly by 49ers fans. He was frustrating at times, to be sure, particularly given his penchant for turning the ball over. He'll have a hard time living down his fourth-quarter performances in Sunday's NFC title game or the Super Bowl two years ago. He had a 4.2 and 2.8 passer rating in the fourth quarter of those games, respectively.
But he was a tent pole for both those teams that likely wouldn't have gotten to those stages without him. Now it's on Lance to help make the 49ers a Super Bowl winner, something Garoppolo regrettably never did.
