Getty Jimmy Garoppolo warms up before the January 30, 2022 NFC title game.
Jimmy Garoppolo has gone through the offseason unclaimed and remains on the San Francisco 49ers roster.
In a free agency period that’s seen four quarterback get dealt away — Russell Wilson, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan and DeShaun Watson — the quarterback many thought would be traded to begin the March 2022 free agency period is still an active member on the 49ers’ roster.
Garoppolo’s shoulder surgery, followed by other quarterback needy teams filling their spots through the draft, helped complicate Jimmy G’s trade value even more. So now, Garoppolo is more than two months away from throwing the football again in training camp…
Except one 49ers insider wrote that San Francisco is yet to be finished with locating a trade partner for that period when Garoppolo can be cleared for workouts.
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What Insider Revealed
Nick Wagoner of ESPN reported that the 49ers “will again seek a trade partner” for the time period of July, when NFL camps start back up.
“After losing to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game, the expectation was that the first big piece of business — trading Garoppolo — would happen quickly,” Wagoner wrote Monday, May 9. “That was before it was known Garoppolo needed right shoulder surgery, a procedure that wiped out his trade value and put his future in limbo.”
“Garoppolo’s shoulder is slated to get the all-clear in late June or early July,” Wagoner continued, “at which point the Niners will again seek a trade partner.”
But even if there’s no trade partner, plus the 49ers downplaying that they don’t plan to cut Garoppolo, Wagoner still believes the quarterback who has played in Super Bowl 54 and last season’s NFC title game is facing a nebulous future in the Bay Area.
“And though the Niners have said repeatedly they don’t intend to release Garoppolo, it’s still hard to imagine a scenario in which he’s on the roster in Week 1, at least at his current $26.95 million cap number,” Wagoner writes.
Any Last Suitors?
Again, most NFL teams have addressed their QB room either through trades, free agency, or the 2022 NFL Draft.
Also, it’s not certain if Garoppolo is worth giving up two second rounders for his services, which was first revealed by NBC Sports’ Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio on March 21.
Notable teams that added a quarterback through the draft include the Carolina Panthers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Atlanta Falcons and Tennessee Titans. All four at one time was considered a potential landing spot for Garoppolo when the trade talks began intensifying for March.
Are all four officially out of the running? One more NFL reporter, Cody Benjamin of CBS Sports, wrote on Monday that there’s still one possible suitor for Garoppolo late before the season begins.
“One of the few teams that could still be interested in the veteran as a 2022 starter is the Panthers, who spent a third-round pick on Mississippi’s Matt Corral but otherwise have just Sam Darnold and P.J. Walker on their QB depth chart,” Benjamin wrote.
In Charlotte, Corral will head to the Panthers untested, while Darnold has been oft-injured and was limited to 11 starts last season (went 4-7 as a starter). Walker, meanwhile, has only played in two regular season games combined in a career that began in 2020 and is 2-0 as a starter, but has thrown two touchdown passes and eight interceptions per Pro Football Reference.
Garoppolo has managed to enter the May minicamp period without getting traded. The new deadline per Wagoner now is training camp.