49ers, Jimmy Garoppolo taking things week by week for playing, contract future

The San Francisco 49ers decision to acquire Jimmy Garoppolo features a host of questions moving forward. The first is when Garoppolo will get into the lineup and game action. The second is when or if he will sign a contract extension sooner rather than later.

On Tuesday, John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan introduced Garoppolo to the media, and all three made sure to slow play things to a certain extent. In response to issue one, Kyle Shanahan said the plan is to take things week-to-week. He said it is unlikely Garoppolo would play this week, but they’ll address it each week until everybody is comfortable with the situation.

As to the second question, there were some interesting responses. Shanahan said they hope he can become their quarterback of the future. Lynch said they are first focused on getting him into the playbook. The 49ers GM acknowledged the presence of Garoppolo’s agent, and said he was sitting next to the guy he’d be negotiating with (I imagine Paraag Marathe).

Garoppolo was asked the question as well, and it’s clear he is just trying to take things step-by-step. He said he was really excited about the trade and opportunity, but he wants to focus on taking things week-by-week. There is a lot to digest in the next couple weeks and all this came together in the space of 24 hours, so that strikes me as a fairly reasonable response for the time being.

Garoppolo will be a free agent after this season, and the 49ers will have some decisions to make. If I had to guess when an extension gets done, I’ll go with some time in December, after he has a handful of starts under his belt. It’s all guesswork at this point, so I suppose we too have to take it week-to-week.