The 49ers have watched Jimmy Garoppolo take them to the NFC Championship game twice, including this past season, and thought it would be a great time to move on from him. The 49ers have been expected to move on from Jimmy Garoppolo and start second-year quarterback Trey Lance under center this season.
At least one coach in the league is hoping they do just that.
It would be a welcomed move for one anonymous NFL coach whose team plays against the 49ers this season, per The Athletic’s Mike Sando.
“That would be like my early Christmas present if they just get rid of Jimmy, so that way he can’t play for them, and then make Trey be your guy,” the anonymous coach told Sando on his annual roundup of the quarterback tiers.
Well then.
The 30-year-old Garoppolo was slotted at No. 16 overall in Tier 3 while Lance sat 13 spots behind him at No. 26.
“I love the skill set (of Lance), but he had ball-accuracy concerns on his tape coming out, and he was really raw,” another head coach told Sando. “The very little I’ve seen of him last season, he’s got a little Tim Tebow to him — it’s a long delivery. It seems like there are some mechanical things he has to work out. But that is from watching a limited number of plays.”
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Another representative from the NFC West agreed.
“Sure, the more he plays, the better he will probably get, but he is a 4, and I feel like he is probably the bottom 4 for me,” the voter said. “Just think about it. You get Russell Wilson out of here and now we’ve got Trey Lance playing and it is like, ‘Oh, thank you.’ It just went from a really good quarterback division to being one of the softer divisions.”
The 49ers invested a great deal in Lance when they traded up to draft him. They had to look past the fact they are 25-12 with Garoppolo as their starter and have made deep playoff runs with him. They must really believe in Lance.
That is a risk Kyle Shanahan and company are willing to take in order to start properly developing a player they believe can be a franchise cornerstone.
