With roster cuts due by Tuesday at 4pm eastern/1pm pacific time, many are asking about Jimmy Garoppolo, and if the 49ers might keep him on the 53-man roster, well let’s go over why that’s just not happening, at least not when the season begins.
If the 49ers were to keep Garoppolo, they’d be guaranteeing him his $24.2 million base salary, which the 49ers can’t afford to carry, as many have seen, my latest roster projection, here, the 49ers would have around $16.130 million in cap room to begin the 2022 season, now if you take out a Tashaun Gipson Sr., add in Jimmy Garoppolo, the team is still going to be around $6.5 million to $7 million over the cap, with only 3 players that they can restructure, to gain cap room, Trent Williams($4.904 million), Fred Warner($1,223,200), & Jimmie Ward($6.224 million), but let me explain why this is a bad idea.
Those 3 add up to $12,351,200, which leaves the team with just $5,851,200 at the most in cap room for the season, with no one else that they can realistically go to about redoing their deals, plus by redoing Ward’s deal, it adds $6.224 million to his already $6.395 million dead money hit in 2023, where the 49ers don’t have much cap room on a $225 million cap, so they’d be losing a significant amount of cap room.
Now, the 49ers could keep Jimmy on the 53 till the last minute, which should be 4pm eastern/1pm pacific time on September 10th, 2022, the day before the teams’ week 1 game in Chicago.
Now, do the 49ers really want to release someone that they really don’t want to, risking losing them either through waivers or to another team if the player was a vested veteran? I don’t think so. Plus, there isn’t a trade market for Garoppolo, so the only choice that makes sense is to release him, whether Jed, John, Kyle or the 49ers as a whole want to do or not, it’s in the team’s best interest.
Plus, the team needs that extra cap room for 1. In season roster moves, and 2. The remainder to be carried over into 2023.
So, in conclusion, expect the 49ers to release Jimmy by this coming Tuesday, because they’ve already given the reigns over to Trey Lance, and as much as the national media wants you to believe that there could be issues, and fans, & players wanting Jimmy to be the QB, that’s not the case, fans have been clamoring for the end of the Jimmy Garoppolo era, & players are all in on Trey Lance, sure it’d be nice to have a competent backup like Jimmy, but not at the expense of having Trey looking over his shoulder, so Jimmy will be cut come Tuesday.
With that said, thank you for reading, & you can follow me on Twitter @49erscap.
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