ESPN put out a story on contracts that were the gold standards of awful (I guess that makes them fools gold) and of course, Jimmy Garoppolo clocks in at No. 1 The back end of the list. We’ve gone over this numerous times already, Fooch even talked about it Friday. I want to chime in now. I have a simple question to anyone who questions the Garoppolo contract: What was the alternative?
Two things have been made clear: Jimmy Garoppolo’s contract was the largest for any quarterback in NFL history and in a matter of weeks, that was no longer the issue when Matt Ryan got paid. If Garoppolo played a full season and put up those numbers in 2018, it was only going to get worse, especially with the looming Aaron Rodgers deal. The 49ers get to kick the tires on him for two seasons (which he is entitled to) and then, thanks to the great work of Paraag Marathe, can cut him if he channels his inner Brock Osweiler. The 49ers had to give him that money, that’s a quarterback market problem, not a team spending problem. Is it a risk? Absolutely it’s a risk. But that’s what you do with quarterbacks. They did the same thing to Aaron Rodgers in his first extension. He got it just after taking over the starting job from Brett Favre. That was a risk too. They are all risks.
If the 49ers held off on this and say, franchise-tagged him, that contract would hurt a helluva lot more. Not to mention the Ryan deal, but Aaron Rodger’s imminent extension would be taken into consideration later on. The 49ers might as well cancel the Brinks truck, and hand him the keys to the Citibank. The 49ers got a deal done as soon as possible after identifying him as their quarterback, before Ryan, Rodgers, and all those other extensions could cause issues and before Garoppolo could ask for all sorts of clauses and Hawaiian Islands.
That was not a bad contract or a bad signing. If they were stuck with him for five years it would be. They aren’t, they have the money to do this and I hope any team in that position would have done the same thing.
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