Kyle Shanahan Reflects on Jimmy Garoppolo's Tenure With the 49ers
The theme of the day for Kyle Shanahan at the NFL's annual meeting on Tuesday was quarterbacks.
That includes quarterbacks who are no longer on the San Francisco 49ers. Shanahan made his first ever comments regarding Jimmy Garoppolo exiting the 49ers. Garoppolo signed a three-year deal with the Las Vegas Raiders in free agency, which officially ended his era with the 49ers. Garoppolo had been a five-year starter with the 49ers with a lot of highs and lows. Shanahan was asked about Garoppolo where he gave a reflection on his tenure with the 49ers.
"It was extremely successful. I mean, look at his record. I know he had a hard time staying healthy with us. The one year that he did stay healthy he took us to the Super Bowl. There's two other years, the next year that he stayed the most healthy we went to the NFC championship. Jimmy played at an extremely high level for us and allowed us to win a lot of games and he's a very good quarterback."'
For a player who has such an impressive record and was a part of a Super Bowl run as mentioned, Shanahan sure kept his reflection rather brief. I think this only adds a bit more credibility to there being some tension between Garoppolo and Shanahan at the end. There were reports/rumors about Shanahan being a bit annoyed with Garoppolo's lack of push to play in the NFC championship game.
Whatever the case is, the relationship between Garoppolo and Shanahan definitely was more contentious this year than in previous years. That is most likely because Garoppolo knew he was on the way out, so it gave him more backbone to speak his mind and not care. Perhaps that played a part in why he played well in the 10 games that he started in where he won seven of them while throwing for 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions.
Garoppolo is now a thing of the past with the 49ers, which I am sure Shanahan is happy to have an upgrade in Brock Purdy and possibly Trey Lance. Shanahan was last asked about if he reached out to Garoppolo regarding his new deal with the Raiders in which he gave an old reference on how bad Garoppolo is with replying to texts.
"That would be impossible. You've got to run into Jimmy to have a conversation with him. For anybody, not just with me. "
