It’s the tail end of the NFL’s silly season, with a few seat placements on the quarterback carousel still to be determined.
Perhaps the cloudiest situation is in Santa Clara, where sourced-up reporters have spent the offseason offering wildly differing perspectives on the San Francisco 49ers’ current (and future) quarterback room.
NBC’s Mike Florio spent most of the winter predicting that none other than Tom Brady would be the Niners starter next year. But as Florio himself later reported, Brady nearly had a deal to join the Dolphins as a player/owner before ultimately unretiring to play for Todd Bowles in Tampa.
So it seems very likely that Jimmy Garoppolo or Trey Lance will be the Week 1 starter. But which one?
There have been rumblings for months that Kyle Shanahan isn’t quite ready to hand the keys to Lance. Adam Schefter said in February that “Lance is greener than people realize,” while another reporter said earlier this month that Lance has “continually underwhelmedhis coaches and front office.
Florio advanced those rumors a step further on Rich Eisen’s radio show Wednesday. “I’ve consistently heard concern that they’re not convinced Lance is ready,” he said, before laying out a convoluted hypothetical where both QBs come to camp, Lance wins the starting job and Garoppolo’s contract is restructured to reduce his pay to a more typical backup level. (He’s currently on the books for a nonguaranteed $25 million next year.)
On Tuesday, Peter King laid out a similar scenario, indicating that maybe the Niners really could hang onto Garoppolo. Or maybe he and Florio just talked to the same source. Either way, King was more definitive about Lance starting, but the gist was the same: Both QBs stay.
“To me, unless somebody gives San Francisco a decent offer, I will not be surprised if they do the same thing this year, with one exception,” he said of the Garoppolo-Lance pairing. “I do think that unless he is simply not ready to play, I do think the starter opening day will be Trey Lance.”
For the NFL content beast to be truly fed, though, there can’t be total unanimity. Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer wrote Wednesday that he’d guess a Garoppolo trade comes by July 1, and NFL personality Ross Tucker predicted Monday that Garoppolo is headed to the Panthers once his shoulder heals from offseason surgery.
So there’s the latest, piping hot: Either Jimmy G will be traded this summer, or he won’t be.