Why the 49ers Could Have to Wait Until Midseason to Trade Jimmy Garoppolo

The 49ers' saga with Jimmy Garoppolo feels like a show that should have been cancelled so long ago.

It's hard to imagine that it's mid July and he's still on the team, even though he said goodbye to local reporters in February. Surely, he never expected to return to the 49ers for the 2022 season, but he might have to.

Steve Young recently said he expects Garoppolo to request his release once he passes a physical, but I'm not so sure Garoppolo would simply walk away from $27 million, considering he would make less than half that on the open market.

Also, both John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan repeatedly have insisted they will not release Garoppolo. Here's what Shanahan said during minicamp on June 7: "Jimmy is under contract with us and if he was healthy, right now I would see him coming to practice (during training camp). Unless we traded him."

One, it's no guarantee that Garoppolo will be healthy for camp, according to Shanahan.

Two, the only team that currently has enough cap space to trade for Garoppolo is the Browns. And they certainly might decide to trade for him if the NFL suspends Deshaun Watson for the entire upcoming season. But even if Watson misses every game this year, the Browns just might go with Jacoby Brissett as their starter. They signed him this offseason, he's much cheaper than Garoppolo and not much worse..

So if the Browns don't trade for Garoppolo, then there probably won't be another trade partner for Garoppolo, at least until the season starts. In that case, the 49ers would have the cap space to keep him yet another year, this time as a backup. And if a quarterback from another team were to suffer a serious injury before the trade deadline, the 49ers could offer Garoppolo to that team in exchange for a second- or third-round pick. The 49ers even could pick up some of Garoppolo's salary if necessary to make the deal work. That seems to be the most likely way the 49ers would trade Garoppolo.

It's also likely that the 49ers never will receive a satisfactory offer for Garoppolo, because he simply isn't good, and they'll keep him all year just so they can get a third-round compensatory pick in 2024 when he leaves in free agency next year.

The saga continues.