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Jimmy Garoppolo Expects to Have Offseason Surgery on his Thumb

The 49ers clearly are putting pressure on Garoppolo to return next week.
Grant Cohn|
Jimmy Garoppolo Expects to Have Offseason Surgery on his Thumb
Jimmy Garoppolo Expects to Have Offseason Surgery on his Thumb

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San Francisco 49ers

SANTA CLARA -- This story keeps getting weirder.

First, Adam Schefter reported Saturday night that although Jimmy Garoppolo will miss the 49ers' upcoming game against the Houston Texans, the 49ers are "optimistic" he will return next week against the L.A. Rams.

Then Sunday morning, almost as a response to Schefter's report, the NFL Netwok's Ian Rapoport reported that Garoppolo hopes to play in the season finale, but there's no guarantee he will because his injury requires surgery.

Let's summarize: The 49ers are downplaying the injury and saying Garoppolo could play through it during the season finale, while someone else (Garoppolo's camp?) is saying the injury is worse than the 49ers are letting on and he might be done for the season and he almost certainly will need surgery.

Good to see the 49ers and Garoppolo are on the same page.

I understand why the 49ers want Garoppolo to play next week -- they've paid him more than $90 million, he played through the injury last week and the 49ers usually beat the Rams when he plays. Plus the 49ers don't know what to expect from his replacement, Trey Lance.

I also understand why Garoppolo might not want to play through this injury. He didn't play well after suffering the injury in Tennessee, the 49ers almost certainly will replace him this offseason (which starts in a few weeks), which means he'll need to be healthy for his next team.

The 49ers clearly are putting pressure on Garoppolo to return. But if they beat the Texans and Lance plays well, perhaps they'll tell Garoppolo to rest his thumb indefinitely.

Stay tuned.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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