San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan met with the media on Wednesday and said he plans on newly acquired quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo being active for Sunday's game against the Arizona Cardinals. Of course, rookie C.J. Beathard is likely to start at quarterback as Garoppolo continues his work to get acclimated to Shanahan's offense.
"I can't promise you guys that he won't play this week," Shanahan said. "I can't promise you guys that he'll play this year. I know that we have a guy that we're excited about and I know has the ability to really help us and help this team in the future. That's what I mean by; we didn't do this just to save this year.
"We did this because we feel this will improve our team and our organization and I'm not going to put someone out there who I don't think has a chance to be successful. That starts with the playbook. That starts with understanding the plays that you're calling, how to communicate it to the other 10 guys, to know actually where people are when you say it."
He may not play on Sunday, but Garoppolo is expected to be active for the game due to the limited options available to the 49ers. Beathard is the only other quarterback on the active roster, and Nick Mullens is on the practice squad.
"We've got two on our roster," Shanahan said. "I know we've got one on our practice squad. We'll see how the week goes, but that's what the plan is right now."
While Shanahan and the coaching staff are using a lot of meeting time to get Garoppolo up to speed, they also have to get Beathard ready to start against Arizona.
"Right now, the most important thing is getting C.J. ready for Sunday, which gets most of the reps and everything," Shanahan said. "Jimmy's process, it's a work in progress right now. He's got a long way to go in terms of learning the language, learning the verbiage of the offense, and the majority of that is done in the classroom.
"Myself, [quarterbacks coach] Rich [Scangarello], and Jimmy are going to have to put in a lot of extra time just to give him a chance to play if need be."
"Rich met with Jimmy most of yesterday," Shanahan continued. "I got a few hours with him too just to talk Xs and Os and to catch him up on stuff and then continue to do stuff throughout the week. Whatever I missed yesterday spending time with Jimmy, I will catch up on this week and usually that's just about two and a half more hours of film that I'm behind on that I promise I'll get to before Sunday.
"But everything else -- it's a fine line. I was trying to teach him enough to where if he had to go in, that he has a chance to function and also trying to gradually just try to build him to the spot where he has an opportunity to fully go into a game and expecting him to play."
The 49ers acquired Garoppolo on Monday via a trade with the New England Patriots. San Francisco sent a second-round draft pick to New England in return for the quarterback, who figures to be its starter for the foreseeable future.