Last week, San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch said on KNBR that, once the opportunity to acquire quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo via a trade presented itself, it took head coach Kyle Shanahan and himself about 10 minutes to decide to move forward with the deal. On October 30, the 49ers gave up a 2018 second-round pick for the quarterback, who they hope will be a long-term solution at the position.
Shanahan has always been a fan of Garoppolo's. The 49ers head coach, then an offensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns, studied the quarterback extensively as he was coming out of college. Shanahan wanted to draft Garoppolo in 2014, but Cleveland went in another direction when they selected quarterback Johnny Manziel with the 22nd overall selection.
"I looked at him hard this offseason too," Shanahan said Thursday on KNBR's "Tolbert & Lund" show. "Watched all the games he's played in the NFL. I looked at everyone when I got here just thinking of guys who could be possibilities and knowing early that they possibly could be looking to trade him."
Of course, Lynch revealed last week that the 49ers inquired about Garoppolo earlier during the offseason.
"I will tell you that I wanted to do a trade this offseason," Lynch told the media the day after the trade was complete. "We inquired and were quickly shut down. It never even came to fruition at all."
Shanahan said that he spoke to New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick at the combine in February and asked about Garoppolo, but was quickly told the quarterback was not available. When the opportunity presented itself again, the 49ers jumped at the chance to land their potential franchise quarterback.
"It came up pretty recently and once we found out that we had the opportunity to get Jimmy, especially for only a second-round pick, that didn't take us very long to decide on what was the right decision to do," Shanahan said.
Since the trade completed over a week ago, Garoppolo has been cramming to pick up the 49ers playbook as quickly as possible. Until Shanahan believes his new quarterback has a good enough grasp of the offense, rookie C.J. Beathard remains the team's starter.
"You've got to look at the advantage that C.J. has over Jimmy right now," Shanahan said. "He's been working on this since OTAs, throughout training camp, and you're going out there at a disadvantage with your team that's banged up. The last thing I'd want to do to someone is put a quarterback in a situation who only has been working on this for about five practices -- a week and a half -- and then to go out there and play in the situation that we're in. I feel like that would be real unfair to Jimmy, and I also think it would be unfair to our team."
You can listen to the entire interview with Shanahan below.
