No matter who the San Francisco 49ers select at No. 3 overall later this month, the speculation surrounding the future of Jimmy Garoppolo will heat up. Right now, the plan is to hold onto the veteran quarterback, allowing the rookie to sit and learn in his first year.
Still, there will be those who believe the 49ers should trade Garoppolo and that his trade value will plummet as soon as his eventual replacement is drafted.
Field Yates joined ESPN's Get Up! and explained why it might be in the Niners' best interest to hold onto Garoppolo for the upcoming season, which head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch have stated as the plan.
"We still plan on him leading us and getting as far as we can with him," Shanahan told reporters in March.
Yates states that if the 49ers wanted to take advantage of Garoppolo's maximum value this offseason, they would have traded him before free agency and before quarterback-needy teams started filling in their vacancies.
"Think about the suitors they would have had available at that time," Yates said. "Chicago, Washington, New England, all those teams that, at the time, not only did not have a new quarterback plan in place but had more roster flexibility in terms of cap space."
Instead, the 49ers held onto Garoppolo and waited until after the free-agency frenzy was over, and coincidentally, after Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson's legal issues surfaced, to move up from the No. 12 overall pick to No. 3.
"I'm not sure that Jimmy Garoppolo is anywhere other than a Forty-Niner at the start of this season," Yates added, "because you're right, in the sense that the minute they draft a Mac Jones, maybe Jimmy G's value depreciates. But it could go right back up if he plays how they expect him to play.
"If they expect him to play pretty well this year, well enough that they could make a playoff run again, a year from now, they could have value in a Jimmy Garoppolo trade and an obvious transition plan to whoever they take at pick three."