Why Jimmy Garoppolo Must Take a Pay Cut

One way or another, Jimmy Garoppolo must take a pay cut this offseason.

Sorry, Jimmy.

He can blame the pandemic for causing the salary cap to go down, or he can blame his latest injury-plagued season for tanking his value. Either way, he simply is too expensive for 2021.

If the pandemic hadn't happened and the cap had gone up as the NFL expected it would, Garoppolo would take up roughly 12 percent of the 49ers cap space next season. And 12 percent is high, but not unheard of.

But the cap won't go up as the NFL expected it would. And if it goes down to $176 million as Over The Cap estimates it will, then Garoppolo will take up a whopping 15.1 percent of the 49ers cap space, and that's way too freaking high. A deal breaker.

Because no quarterback ever has won a Super Bowl while taking up more than 13.1 percent of his team's cap space. And Garoppolo probably won't be the exception.

When he took the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2019, he took up only 8.6 percent of their cap space -- a reasonable amount for a player of his modest abilities. And 8.6 percent of $176 million is "merely" $15 million. So that's the most the 49ers should pay Garoppolo in 2021. Anything more would be too much.

And they currently are on the hook to pay him a gargantuan $26.9 million next season.

Can't happen.

So here's what the 49ers can do. They can convert $15 million of his 2021 base salary into a signing bonus, which would make him cheaper this year, but also would tie the 49ers to him long term by creating dead cap space if they were to cut him.

Or, the 49ers simply can release Garoppolo and re-sign him to a deal that would pay him $15 million in 2021. Call that Option B.

I would go with Option B.

Garoppolo has no leverage. He's just a guy who makes too much money and doesn't play enough.