The 49ers are not allowed to change anything at the quarterback. At least not with their appetizer. All signs after week 17 point to Garoppolo starting below center and starting next season. Even if it turns out to be the case, San Francisco still has to address the elephant in their quarterback room.
With Garoppolo’s injury history – he has missed 25 of 57 potential starts since his first starting chance for the Patriots in 2016 – the 49ers must come up with a better contingency plan in case he gets hurt.
Teams generally don’t plan for their starting quarterback to go down, but San Francisco has too good a roster to derail an injury from a quarterback who has missed so much time for their season. Nick Mullens is unable to keep the team upright for longer than one or two games. The same can be said for CJ Beathard.
All three players arrived in Santa Clara in 2017, and they have been the trio of quarterbacks on the roster since 2018. Nor has there been any serious competition for any of them.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters in a video conference Monday that this would be different from the quarterback’s evaluation perspective off-season.
“Yes, we’ll look at it more closely this year, but not for anything to make a big statement about or tweet about,” Shanahan said. “Last year I was very happy with our starting quarterback. I was very happy and satisfied with our second string. I was very happy and satisfied with our third string. They were all under contract. We were ready to go. “
Then Shanahan offered insight into the club’s strategy in the 2020 design. Their case of guitar picks was relatively bare and they had to make a few trades before eventually walking away with five selections. It sounds like San Francisco would have drafted a quarterback for the second time in Shanahan’s tenure in a more normal year when they entered the draft with seven or more picks.
“As we entered the off-season, it seemed like we had about three design choices,” Shanahan said of the 2020 design process. “I think we had one in the first and then the fourth. So it’s, ‘Okay. We don’t even touch quarterbacks. We are fine with our three. We don’t have to look at that much. ”
They ended with two wide receivers, a tight end, and a lineman on each side of the ball.
There was a brief moment in the off-season where rumors spread about the freelancer quarterback and Bay Area resident Tom Brady, who wanted to play for his hometown. After internal discussions, Shanahan and general manager John Lynch chose to stay with Garoppolo.
“Of course, if someone is like the best footballer ever, you have to look at that anyway,” Shanahan said of Brady’s free agency. “Other than that, we weren’t because of our situation.”
Then Shanahan discussed this off-season and the 49ers’ impending backup quarterback dilemma. Last year it wasn’t that big of a deal as Garoppolo came out of a 16-game season, Nick Mullens looked like a capable No. 2 quarterback and Beathard was a good third option.
Now the two reserves are ready to hit free trade, forcing the 49ers to take on the quarterback depth chart. Shanahan explained that while he was happy with Mullens and Beathard, the club will look harder at other options than in the past year.
‘This year our backup and our third now, one limited and the other unlimited. So you have to research everything when you’re trying to fill out a quarterback roster, ”said Shanahan. “We have a starting quarterback, but to know where these guys will be, we have to re-sign the guys we have or see if we can upgrade them through the concept or free agency. To do that, you have to evaluate everything so you know how to stack them and all. So we will certainly be looking at a lot more of that kind of thing this year than we were last year. “
It’s hard to imagine, after the club’s struggle this year with backup quarterbacks starting in place of Garoppolo, that the 49ers would choose the same group. In fact, they may end up looking for a substantial upgrade that could eventually end Garoppolo, whose contract expires after the 2022 season.
The wheels are spinning in the San Francisco quarterback room for the first time in three years, and how they navigate those waters could have a ripple effect defining the club’s long-term below-center future.