Jimmy Garoppolo had a very interesting 49ers tenure, and all reports point to the quarterback's time in the Bay ending on an awkward note.
It was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle's Mike Silver in March that 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan was upset with Garoppolo for skipping QB meetings while injured late in the season. And now, per The Athletic's Tim Kawakami, the team felt their long-time signal-caller basically ignored them as he remained sidelined during their latest NFL playoff run.
"I’ve heard that the 49ers believe Garoppolo had tuned them out almost totally during the playoffs," Kawakami wrote in his latest, after noting both Shanahan and general manager John Lynch thought of Garoppolo as an "ex-49er" in the postseason. "They didn’t want Garoppolo anymore. If it came to a crisis QB, they were happy to go with [Philip] Rivers. The one thing led to the other."
Shanahan told reporters last week in Las Vegas that Rivers, who retired after the 2020 NFL season, was the 49ers' contingency plan long before they ran out of healthy quarterbacks in the NFC Championship Game at the end of an injury-filled season. Had San Francisco advanced to the Super Bowl, Shanahan said, Rivers was prepared to come out of retirement and play.
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And in a separate interview with Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer, Shanahan said then-rookie Brock Purdy would have held onto the starting role for the Super Bowl had he not been injured and the team advanced, even if Garoppolo's broken foot had healed by then and the veteran was cleared to play.
Kawakami's report isn't the first time Garoppolo has been rumored to go ghost on the 49ers, and the columnist also wrote communication between the quarterback and San Francisco was "non-existent" as the team attempted to figure out whether or not he could be ready for the playoffs after his Week 13 injury.
But, according to Garoppolo, he was ready to play on Super Bowl Sunday.
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"Oh yeah, I was playing," Garoppolo told Silver in Vegas. "That was kind of the plan of not getting the [foot] surgery."
Unfortunately for the 49ers Faithful, they never got to see who San Francisco's Super Bowl starter would have been. And with Garoppolo now on the Las Vegas Raiders, he'll look to return to the NFL's biggest stage in silver and black -- hopefully with more communication -- as Purdy begins his first full season as starter in the Bay.
