For the first time during the Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch era, the San Francisco 49ers will enter the regular season with three quarterbacks on the roster. Jimmy Garoppolo will be the starter, and an offseason-long competition between Nick Mullens and C.J. Beathard resulted in the former being named the No. 2 quarterback.
Some fans wondered why the 49ers decided to keep Beathard, a third-round selection from Lynch and Shanahan's first draft together in 2017.
Beathard was unseated as the starting quarterback during each of the past two seasons. While both instances were initially because of an injury, Beathard was never able to reclaim the starting job. Now he is third on the depth chart on a team that typically carried just two quarterbacks, and he is unlikely to be active when the 49ers kick off the regular season in Tampa, Florida on Sunday.
If you ask the 49ers why Beathard remains on the roster, the answer is simple. The team's decision-makers believe in the quarterback. Although, they were open to trading one of their two backup quarterbacks leading to the 53-player roster cut-down this past Saturday. While there was some interest, the 49ers' asking price, reportedly a mid-round pick, was too high for other organizations.
"In the last week, there was a lot of interest, a lot of conversations," Lynch said via a conference call on Saturday. "That position to us is one that you just set a price on, and you stay firm on it. While we had discussions, we never deviated from what that price was for us, and nobody ever met it, so we were happy to carry the three in."
That leaves Beathard on the roster.
Lynch joined 49ers Live with Keiana Martin on Wednesday and shared that Beathard may have fallen to third on the depth chart, but that doesn't mean the team doesn't believe in the third-year quarterback.
"C.J. Beathard's a guy who we have a lot of belief in," Lynch said. "We drafted him in the third round. Although the record and maybe the numbers don't indicate that, he's done nothing to disappoint us.
"We feel like we've worked and identified some things this offseason to work on. C.J. came back a better player. He ultimately lost out to Nick Mullens, but that's more of a credit to Nick than anything C.J. did wrong."