On Tuesday morning, San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch spoke with team reporter Joe Fann and revealed that the team tried to trade for New England Patriots quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo during the offseason.
"We tried to do a deal this offseason, and it didn't come to fruition," Lynch told Fann.
After eight weeks worth of regular season games, the opportunity to acquire Garoppolo presented itself, and the 49ers jumped at the chance. The 49ers and Patriots agreed to a deal that sent Garoppolo to San Francisco in return for a 2018 second-round draft pick.
During Tuesday afternoon's introductory press conference of Garoppolo, Lynch shared some details about the offseason trade attempt, which apparently went nowhere fast.
"I will tell you that I wanted to do a trade this offseason," Lynch explained. "We inquired and were quickly shut down. It never even came to fruition at all. In the last couple of days, it did, and we were very pleased that was the case."
This past offseason, the 49ers were shut down so quickly by the Patriots that terms for a potential trade were never even discussed.
"There never were any terms because we never got to propose (any) because it was basically not an option," Lynch said. "That's what I appreciated. You get an answer real quick from them, and that was the case then. So there never were terms. We're very pleased with the way it worked out."
The 49ers acted fast during this opportunity. Adam Schefter of ESPN reported that the discussions for the trade all started and ended on Monday.
"We had an opportunity right now," Lynch said. "We thought about it for about 10 minutes and said, 'This is too good an opportunity to not take advantage of.' And so we jumped at it."
Why did the 49ers suddenly have an opportunity to acquire Garoppolo?
"We probably had, in my opinion, the best quarterback situation in the league for the last, let's call it two-and-a-half years," Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said via 49ers.com. "It's just not sustainable given the way that things are set up. It's definitely not something that we wanted to walk away from, and I felt like we rode it out as long as we could. … This is really the last window that we had, and we did what we felt was best for the team."