The San Francisco 49ers must now start Garoppolo after an injury to rookie quarterback Beathard. Who really is their future quarterback?
We don’t know what the San Francisco 49ers are doing or what their plan is at quarterback. Yet it seems that they have been done a favor by the football gods. Otherwise, this entire 2017 season would have been a waste.
The quarterback they traded for will now start over their injured rookie. Is this a sign of the future, or a road bump in the team’s master plan? It’s a guessing game.
Two brothers from New York, Dan Salem and Todd Salem, debate the San Francisco 49ers in today’s NFL Sports Debate.
Todd Salem:
When San Francisco traded for Jimmy Garoppolo prior to the trade deadline, most folks thought he would start as many games as possible for this team down the stretch. It needed to get an extended look at the pending free agent before deciding on his future contract. Games came and he wasn’t ready yet. The bye week came and he still wasn’t given a start coming out of it. It made no sense. What were the 49ers waiting for? C.J. Beathard is not the quarterback of the future. If he was, the team wouldn’t have traded for the last year of Garoppolo before free agency. It needed to give Jimmy a long look.
Instead, the Niners weren’t giving him any look at all on game day. Yet they announced that they would franchise him after the season if need be, meaning they would be on the hook for roughly $25 million for a player who had never taken the field in their system. 2018 would be the look at him for the future rather than the back half of 2017.
The football gods put an end to that ridiculousness when they injured Beathard, forcing Garoppolo into action late in Week 12. The home crowd cheered, much to the chagrin of the other San Francisco players. It was a really bad and callous look, but they were right to cheer in the sense of the future of their team. Garoppolo needs to be in there. He looked good, albeit on a drive that didn’t impact the outcome. And he is now in line to start for the remainder of the season after receiving the built-in excuse to bench Beathard. But the 49ers shouldn’t have needed such a scenario. There was no reason to keep Beathard in there.
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Were they winning with him? No. Were they playing for the future with him? No. Was he making the players around him better? Not noticeably. The only possible explanation for this lack of decisiveness with Garoppolo is a belief that the offensive line (the same line that led to Beathard’s injury) will not be able to keep the newcomer upright. Putting Garoppolo in would threaten his future. If so, five more weeks of this sucks for Beathard. Otherwise, this makes no sense. The 49ers were planning on sacrificing another entire season, putting something off nine months that could begin right now.
Dan Salem:
I understand your sentiments, but the reality is quite different and very grey. Beathard is a rookie and was playing very well up until his injury. The 49ers are a bad football team, yet Beathard kept them in contention most weeks, put up solid numbers without a number one or two receiver, and even got the team a win. He was playing great for a rookie quarterback, so it made perfect sense to me for San Francisco to allow him to continue to grow and lead this football team. Now what?
Trading for Garoppolo was a situation where the 49ers bought low on a potentially great player. Now they are in the driver’s seat with the ability to trade him, dump him, franchise him, or make him their starting quarterback. Letting Garoppolo play does nothing for their leverage, because San Francisco is a bad team. Any playing time likely hurts Garoppolo’s value, rather than improving it. If the 49ers know what they have and like what type of player he is, then they do not need to see what he can do. They simply need to keep his value up, to get a return on their investment one way or another.
It was the best case scenario for the 49ers, up until Beathard got hurt. Their rookie quarterback was improving and doing better than expected, actually looking like a winner and a leader. Plus the team acquired a highly valuable quarterback, thought to be a franchise player. They had two extremely valuable quarterbacks. Now they have one hurt rookie and a player they’d rather not put on the field, because wins don’t matter right now.
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If Garoppolo plays great and Beathard recovers from his injury, then no harm done. But Garoppolo might not look great on this current San Francisco offense, and he does not have the built-in excuse of being a rookie to shield criticism. I was impressed when watching Beathard play, so it would not surprise me if he returns to be the starter before season’s end. Why risk injuring Garoppolo, while stunting the growth of your rookie? That’s a double negative. Question the long-term approach all you want, but its still 2017 and there’s a month of football left to play. San Francisco can’t ignore the present.