On Thursday, San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch joined the Rich Eisen Show after speaking with reporters at the team's Santa Clara facility. Understandably, the first question was about Jimmy Garoppolo, the quarterback the Niners tried to trade all season.
Garoppolo will serve as Trey Lance's backup, and few envisioned that happening. Everyone inside the building believed Garoppolo was headed out the door. Even the quarterback admitted that returning didn't cross his mind.
Lynch had already admitted that there was interest in Garoppolo from other teams and that trade conversations were had at the NFL Scouting Combine.
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"It's obviously been a long journey, way back to kind of around the Combine time," Lynch told Eisen, "when I really thought that conversations with a number of teams—probably honed in on two or three teams where I thought there was a real strong reality that it was happening, just the tenor of the conversations, the discussions of compensation. And then we got the call from Jimmy, that ... they had made the decision [to undergo shoulder surgery]."
Garoppolo and his camp felt that the shoulder would heal on its own. That didn't happen.
"I really don't like to get surgery if I don't have to," Garoppolo said on Thursday, "so I was really in the thought of, 'I could rehab this thing. I played three or four games on it. Whatever. I think I can get through this.' After about three, four weeks of that, it wasn't happening; it wasn't working. We were like, 'Alright, we've got to get the surgery.'"
That threw all trade conversations out the window for Lynch and the 49ers. They had to communicate with those who had expressed interest that Garoppolo was going to undergo shoulder surgery and wouldn't be able to throw for months.
"You can imagine being those teams," Lynch said. "'Hey, we're going to step back.' ... Then the chairs start filling up."
The general manager is referring to this offseason's game of quarterback musical chairs. Once the dust had settled, Garoppolo was the last one standing.
Lynch held on to the belief that something would materialize during training camp. After all, Garoppolo is 33-14 as a starter, and has been to two NFC title games and a Super Bowl. The general manager felt it was just a matter of time before they received some interest from another team.
"That really never happened," Lynch said. "A few teams called. But I think everyone, the injury to the shoulder, and the fact that a lot of those seats had filled up [hurt Garoppolo's value]."
That's when Lynch went to head coach Kyle Shanahan to discuss the possibility of Garoppolo returning to the 49ers in a backup role. Shanahan didn't think Garoppolo would welcome the idea, mainly because the coach felt someone would eventually be interested in trading for the quarterback.
Regardless of its chances, Lynch and Shanahan spoke with Garoppolo about the possibility. They also talked to Lance to ensure he was OK with the idea, reassuring the former No. 3 overall pick that he was the starting quarterback.
"I guess some people might say, 'Why didn't you just do it then, a month ago or something?'" Lynch said. "Well, Jimmy and Don Yee and Carter Chow, his representatives, I think smartly said, 'We're going to wait for every possibility, whether that's a starting quarterback getting hurt, whatever it is. Sometimes time is your friend on these things, so we're going to wait until the very end of camp, until the last preseason game is played, before were ready to do something like that, but we do have interest.'"
Lynch added, "When it happened, it happened very quickly."
