If newly acquired San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo enters a game this season, it will be with a scaled down set of plays at his disposal. Joining the team mid-season has forced the quarterback to take a crash course in learning head coach Kyle Shanahan's offense and the unique verbiage involved with it.
While Garoppolo will be active on Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, Shanahan has already stated the team will evaluate his ability to start on a week-by-week basis. In the meantime, San Francisco will be leaning on rookie quarterback C.J. Beathard, who is the only other quarterback on the roster following the release of Brian Hoyer, to carry the offense.
Shanahan joined KNBR on Friday morning and discussed the 49ers' approach to preparing Garoppolo.
"We'll get as much as we can through these eight weeks, but he still won't have it down throughout just these eight weeks," Shanahan said on the "Murph & Mac" show. "That's something that takes an entire offseason. Even working with quarterbacks in the past, going through my first year with Matt Ryan, we worked all offseason together and had a lot down on the offseason. You go through his season, and you get to that second year and you feel so much more comfortable that second year going through it.
"To give a guy kind of a crash course who has no experience in your verbiage and what you're doing, to give him a crash course in the middle of the year, it's a very uphill battle. So, he's definitely not going to get all of it. You've got to be able to piece something together for him that gives him a chance to go out and function when the time happens."
Much was made of a comment by Shanahan this week, saying he cannot guarantee Garoppolo would play this season. Of course, the sentence before that statement has been, for the most part, ignored.
"I can't promise you guys that he won't play this week," Shanahan told reporters on Wednesday. "I can't promise you guys that he'll play this year."
Shanahan was asked to clarify the statement.
"I didn't mean that he won't (play this season)," Shanahan said. "They were trying to ask me when he would and I said, 'We haven't thought about that yet.' We're working on this every single day and we didn't bring Jimmy here just to save our season and to change our record and to put that all on him. We brought Jimmy here because that opportunity presented itself and we knew that would help our team and help our organization.
"We're working with Jimmy every single day he's been here. We're going to continue to work with him, and we've got to make sure we give him an opportunity that, when he does go out there, he has a chance to be successful. I want to make sure our team's right, we can get some of our guys back.
"I want to make sure when Jimmy goes in, he's able to function, knows what he's doing, and we're not just putting him in there to put him in there. We're putting him in there to help, and to help him, and to help our future."
You can listen to the entire interview with Shanahan below.
