Kyle Shanahan appears willing to go to his grave with the veteran Jimmy Garoppolo leading his 49ers offense.
Despite another horrendous showing from Jimmy G on Sunday, Shanahan told reporters on Monday night that he’s sticking with the 29-year-old.
To make matters worse, Shanahan isn’t even going to give Trey Lance first-team reps during practice anymore. In other words, there’s no “open competition” at the quarterback position right now.
“You’re not going to start rotating quarterbacks because it’s not an open competition right now,” Shanahan said on Monday.
Kyle Shanahan indicates Trey Lance, when healthy, won’t be getting more first-team reps during practice.
“You’re not going to start rotating quarterbacks because it’s not an open competition right now.”#49ers
— Chris Biderman (@ChrisBiderman) October 25, 2021
It doesn’t even sound like Jimmy Garoppolo is at risk of losing his starting gig to Trey Lance at any point the rest of this season.
Shanahan said Jimmy Garoppolo was not one bad game away from losing his job. #49ers
— Chris Biderman (@ChrisBiderman) October 25, 2021
To be fair, Kyle Shanahan gets paid the big bucks to evaluate his players. But we have no clue what he’s seeing that we’re not.
The 49ers are 2-4 this season. Their only wins came against the Lions and Eagles who are now a combined 2-12 on the year. Three of the 49ers’ four losses were one-score games. We have to wonder how those games would have finished had Trey Lance started from Week 1 on.
Shanahan knows what he’s getting from Garoppolo at this point. It’s nothing special. He’ll never lead the 49ers to wins they wouldn’t have otherwise won without him.
Lance, meanwhile, is the future face of the franchise. Shanahan’s treating him like he some third- or fourth-rounder the 49ers took as a project to develop in coming years.
Shanahan clearly doesn’t want to throw in the towel on the 2021-22 season. The 49ers still have a shot to get things turned around, and there’s no doubt Garoppolo’s the safer option. But at some point, Shanahan has to make the change.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like the 49ers will make the quarterback change anytime soon.
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