Gold Diggers: Do the 49ers have the most stable quarterback situation in the NFC West?

Well, well, well. How the turntables have turned. Uncertainty around the 49ers quarterback situation swirled all offseason long. Now that the team is back in training camp, Kyle Shanahan has officially handed the starting job to Trey Lance, and things have settled down. The same cannot be said for the rest of the NFC West.

Kyle Shanahan squashed all the QB controversy by announcing that the team had moved on from Jimmy Garoppolo at the start of training camp. Since then, it has been smooth sailing for the Niners, even with Jimmy Garoppolo still around.

“I don’t come up with anything,” Shanahan said today, “We have a real good relationship with Jimmy. There’s no secret here with what the situation is. He fully understands the situation, and we fully understand the situation.”

Eventually, the split will happen, but there is no split inside the building on the future of the team at quarterback. While Trey Lance has run hot and cold this training camp, he’s QB1 for better or worse.

The rest of the division’s quarterback situations are a little up in the air right now. In Los Angeles, Matthew Stafford is dealing with “bad tendonitis,” according to Ian Rapoport, but Rams coach Sean McVay didn’t sound like they knew what the injury is for sure.

“It’s a little bit abnormal for a quarterback, some of this stuff is things that MLB pitchers deal with, so it is something that we’re kind of learning about on the fly and his feedback,” McVay said yesterday, “We’re really trying to just figure out, ‘OK, how do we get the best plan in place to try to minimize some of the things that he was having to push through,’ while also giving him the confidence that, ‘Hey, I can really just, let it go, not have to worry about it, play to the best of my ability.’

“The goal is to try to get him to feel as good as possible, especially when you’re talking about something with that throwing elbow, and this is the plan that we feel best about, but it is something that I’ve never navigated through as a coach with a quarterback. You’ve had little elbow things here and there, but this is something that we want to be as smart as possible, and it’s taken a big team to try to do that.”

Yikes. That is not encouraging to hear in August before Stafford has taken a single snap or a single hit. Certainly not the way you want to start the defense of your Super Bowl title.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, they can’t even sign their quarterback to a new contract without embarrassing him with a homework clause...and them embarrassing him again by removing it once the clause became public. If that wasn’t enough, it seems like all might not be copasetic between Kyler Murray and Kliff Kingsbury.

If Kyler and Kliff are disagreeing on play calls, isn’t the solution to get in a room and hash it out rather than simply chucking the radio at him and saying, “Go ahead big dog?” More important than that, however, is a question that Michelle asked during the show today. Why is Kingsbury saying this publicly? There are a bunch of ways to answer a question about Kyler being on the radio without making him look bad. It just seems like another situation where the team knew or should have known that they were going to make their franchise quarterback look like an immature brat.

As for the Seahawks, well...To be nice, let’s just say that there are a lot of unknowns for them at quarterback this year. Many people believe, including possibly the 49ers, that they’re simply waiting for Jimmy Garoppolo to become a free agent before scooping him up. Until that happens, stable is the last word I’d use to describe that quarterback situation.

Coaches like to say that players either get better or they get worse, but they never stay the same. That logic also applies to quarterback situations, and right now, the 49ers look to have the best one in the NFC West.

Other topics in today’s show

• Is Rob too negative about the 49ers? (1:21)
• Rob weighs in on the Trey Lance question from yesterday’s Gold Standard (3:53)
• Why joint practices will teach us more than anything else this year (6:24)
• Pay attention to what the Vikings say after joint practices (8:55)
• Did the Niners agree to practice with Minnesota just so Kyle Shanahan could see Kirk Cousins? (13:28)
• Should the 49ers try and move Jimmy G. for a better backup QB? (15:29)
• Matt Stafford is having serious arm issues right now (19:16)
• Do Kyler Murray and Kliff Kingsbury even like each other? (23:43)
• Why the 49ers have the best QB situation in the NFC West right now? (28:23)
• One Nick Bosa prop bet you should make right now (31:34)
• Michelle joined Stats’ fantasy league and immediately wants to change the rules (34:15)