Why Jimmy Garoppolo Agreed to a Restructured Contract Before Cut-Down Day

With Tuesday’s 4 p.m. ET deadline, the Niners could have parted ways with the QB and saved $27 million in cap space. Plus, a tribute to the innovation of Ernie Zampese and more.

As far as player movement goes, the next 48 hours in the NFL are pretty wild (even if most of the names involved are ones you may not be familiar with). And so we’ll start with the most prominent name and a new development …

• Here’s the reality of the Jimmy Garoppolo situation—the timing of his shoulder surgery made it awkward, and weird, and left things undone with the 49ers with less than two weeks left until the opener. So here we are with Garoppolo mostly healthy, and having spent the summer in semi-exile from his teammates, and now headed back into a season with them and a new, restructured contract.

Mike Dinovo/USA TODAY Sports (Jimmy Garoppolo); Kevin Whitlock/Massillon Independent/USA TODAY Network (Ernie Zampese); Junfu Han/USA TODAY Network (Jeff Okudah)

The details on Garoppolo’s contract are relatively straightforward. He was set to make $24.2 million in base salary with $800,000 available in per-game roster bonuses. Those numbers are now knocked down to $6.5 million and $500,000, respectively, with Garoppolo having the ability to make $8.45 million of it back in play-time incentives. Which essentially knocks his base down from starter to backup money, and accounts for the fact that the per-game roster bonuses will likely come just for dressing for games, rather than starting them.

Garoppolo also has, and this is key, no-trade and no-tag provisions (we’ll get to those here in a little bit).

And as for why he’d do this deal, well, there are a few reasons.

The first one relates to the shoulder. He had the surgery in late February on his throwing shoulder. So not only would it have been a leap of faith for a team to trade for him at the outset of the league year in March, when there were the most open spots, such a team would also be signing up for its new starting quarterback to miss all of the spring and part of the summer, while only having a year left on the contract. That’s a lot to consider, and makes this situation markedly different than if he’d been able to get back June 1 for part of OTAs (which may have been the case with a January surgery) and mandatory minicamp.

For that reason, an opportunity to start elsewhere simply hadn’t materialized. In March, there were healthier options out there for quarterback-needy teams. By August, all the seats out there had been filled. And the Niners’ hope that there’d be a change to someone else’s quarterback situation—to create the need for a trade—never happened.

The second reason for Garoppolo to do this restructure is financial. The Niners held the cards. They could hold onto him until next Tuesday with no financial penalty, and they could hold onto him until next Saturday if they were willing to cut him a $1.34 million game check for Week 1. Thirteen of the NFL’s 32 teams have less than $10 million in cap space. All but four have less than $20 million. Simply put, there was no assurance that he’d get even close to his new $6.5 million base salary if he was out on the market at the beginning of September.

The third reason is there is mutual benefit for Garoppolo and the Niners. If Trey Lance gets nicked up or if he struggles, Garoppolo will get a good chance to showcase his ability in an offense with players he’s familiar with, which should help his value next year. And if someone else goes through a quarterback injury, suddenly the Niners could have a desperate suitor to work a trade—and Garoppolo, at that point, could wield his no-trade clause not just to dictate his destination, but also maybe to renegotiate his contract again. The no-tag clause ensures he can get to free agency, which would be another leverage point in a potential trade scenario.

So in the end this is far from an ideal outcome. The Niners wanted two second-rounders for Garoppolo (the price they got for Alex Smith nine years ago) when their season ended in January, not knowing what lay ahead, and they’ll probably never get that for him (barring a team getting wild with desperation). But if you look closely, you can see why this wound up being the right conclusion for everyone involved.

• Financials are a big part of tomorrow, of course. Cap compliance changes, slightly, after you get past the cutdown to 53—before the cut, only the top 51 cap figures are counted toward the limit; after the cut, all 53 go into the equation. And more important, teams are a lot closer to locking in what they’ll have to operate with through the season, as it relates to their ability to churn the roster or pull off trades. So here, then, are the 13 teams that are within $10 million of the limit as it stood Monday morning (per the NFL’s internal report).

1) 49ers: $2.91M

2) Giants: $5.02M

3) Jets: $5.23M

4) Patriots: $5.96M

5) Rams: $8.05M

6) Ravens: $8.61M

7) Chiefs: $8.84M

8) Eagles: $9.09M

9) Steelers: $9.21M

10) Vikings: $9.41M

11) Bucs: $9.55M

12) Lions: $9.64M

13) Texans: $9.67M

So you could see those teams maneuver to create a little more breathing room. On the flip side, the Browns ($48.05M), Raiders ($20.76M), Cowboys ($20.52M) and Panthers ($20.35M) are swimming in space, though Cleveland is likely to roll over a good chunk of what it’s got this year to next year to manage Deshaun Watson’s $54.99 million cap charge in 2023.

• Obviously, this also illustrates that doing Watson’s contract the way they did, while common for NFL teams, wasn’t necessary for the Browns. Generally, a small cap number and big bonus in Year 1 of a mega-contract is to navigate a tight cap situation in that season. And since Cleveland’s cap situation isn’t exactly tight, obviously, there was not a huge need to use this well-worn cap mechanism.

Which leaves contractually protecting Watson against a suspension as the only real reason for the Browns to do the deal the way they did.

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Zampese was known for his innovative offense and coached Fouts, Hall of Famer with the Chargers :: Kevin Whitlock/Massillon Independent/USA TODAY Network

• Ernie Zampese was never a head coach and, according to those who knew him, didn’t really aspire to be one, either. Getting to that level was never why he coached—and he was beyond happy to run offenses and teach players and innovate in the way he did both things. And that was good enough for him to be held in pretty high regard by the people who got to learn from him over his 29 years in the NFL.

Zampese died Monday morning at 86 years old.

“I get to say I was there for two years and got to listen to Ernie and Ted Tollner tell quarterbacks what to look at, develop new plays, and go through the process of putting together an offense,” said former Rams coach Mike Martz, who was with Zampese as quarterbacks coach of the old L.A. Rams in 1992 and ’93. “I tried to emulate him my whole career. I failed to do it, but I still got to learn from the greatest there ever was.”

If you started following pro football over the last two decades, you may not even know who Zampese was. But you probably know of a lot of people who cashed in on the impact he made in football over the years.

“He was doing things in the late ’70s, the ’80s and ’90s that guys now think they invented last year,” said former Washington, San Diego and Oakland coach Norv Turner, who was with Zampese in ’87 and ’88. “The passing-game style, the formations, the movement, the route combinations, the way he taught the quarterback, the protections—everything he did is still being done.”

The scheme—known in football parlance as the three-digit system—made such an impact on both guys, who spent just two years apiece with Zampese, that they took the bones of it pretty much everywhere they went thereafter. In fact, Turner sold the marriage of John Robinson’s USC run game and Zampese’s Don Coryell–rooted passing game to get the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator job in 1990. And Martz’s Greatest Show on Turf Rams were driven by the aggressive system the coach had learned at the heel of Zampese.

So, then, you can go through the players impacted by Zampese’s offense. It was, to be sure, the guys with the Chargers (Dan Fouts, Charlie Joiner, Kellen Winslow, John Jefferson) and Rams (Jim Everett, Flipper Anderson, Henry Ellard) who played for Zampese. But it was also by extension Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith (who first played for Turner, then Zampese) in Dallas, and Philip Rivers, LaDainian Tomlinson and Antonio Gates in San Diego, and Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce in St. Louis.

The genius of how Zampese built it was twofold. First, it was one of the earliest schemes constructed to attack coverage rules—something Zampese was great at with his background as a college secondary coach. Second, it was flexible and allowed a coach to meld the offense to the skill players he had on hand.

“He had a unique way of understanding what players could do,” Turner said. “He had cut-ups of the Charger offenses that we watched, and you could see how they did the things Winslow, Joiner and Fouts did well. And if our guys do those things, great—Ellard was Joiner in our offense. But Flipper Anderson was different, so Ernie created a role that worked best for him.”

And so, yes, the aggressive offense bent to his play-calling, the quick-receiver screens and the way he used the tight end are ways he innovated. But just as much, his impact was felt in the flexibility he showed to get the most out of everyone—which led to him having such a great impact on those around him.

“So many of us owe our livelihood to him,” Martz said. “Football is where it is because of Ernie. Air Coryell isn’t what it was without him—he was the guy driving the car. So his impact can’t be duplicated.”

But it should, especially on this day, be appreciated.

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• With the Raiders aggressively looking for a trade partner to off-load Alex Leatherwood (we mentioned this morning that he’s lost confidence, and could use the change of scenery), I do think Las Vegas is close to cementing its plan at right tackle. My guess would be that Jermaine Eluemunor starts the season there. And once rookie Thayer Munford is healthy, I’d expect the sixth-round pick to push him for that spot.

Obviously, Brandon Parker’s injury is what complicated this situation in the first place. Which, to me, illustrates where the team stands on Leatherwood, the final first-round pick of the Jon Gruden/Mike Mayock era.

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• Speaking of regaining confidence, it’s good to see former No. 3 pick Jeff Okudah getting there with the Lions. His first two seasons as a pro were marred by injury—a groin injury in 2020 and an Achilles in ’21—and there was concern that all of that had taken a toll on his psyche, which can be pretty concerning when the guy is playing a position that requires a certain mindset. As such, coach Dan Campbell and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn made him earn back his starting spot, and that’s just what Okudah did.

It’s also worth noting that the wildly-gifted Okudah didn’t really become an elite college corner until his third year at Ohio State. Maybe a similar jump happens for him in his third year in Detroit.

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• Is there a benefit to Steelers coach Mike Tomlin keeping his quarterback decision under wraps through this week? Actually, yes. And maybe it’s silly, but a lot of coaches in these sorts of spots think wasting another team’s man hours, in making them prepare for two quarterbacks and how one runs the offense vs. the other, can create a competitive edge.

The dissenting opinion there would be that teams have to prepare both quarterbacks (though the time allocation could differ), and there’s something to be said for getting everyone publicly behind the starter before his first game with his new team.

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• The Vikings are listening to trade offers for running back Alexander Mattison, and that makes sense. He’s cheap and in a contract year, and rookie Ty Chandler and second-year man Kene Nwangwu have shown enough to make you think they can be adequate longer-term depth pieces behind Dalvin Cook (both being under contract for the next few years helps bolster that thought), with (and this is key) value in both the passing game and the run game.

On the flip side, I do think Mattison could be seen as a value for someone who needs help at the position. His base salary is just $965,000 for this year, and he’s got three years of track record as a nice, versatile piece for an offense. The Vikings aren’t going to give him away, but I think they’d make a deal for the right offer.

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• Good to see the Commanders’ Brian Robinson’s going to be O.K. We can wait on the football part of the equation.

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• Happy trails to my good friend Bob Glauber, whose last day covering the NFL on a full-time basis was Sunday.

The best thing I can say about Bob is that there are few who have as many younger people that love him. And I’d count myself among them. In a competitive field, it’s always easy for older folks to sneer at the young aspiring types. Glauber, though, was the exact opposite of that to me as I was coming up in the business, and I’d be stunned if there’s anyone who had a different experience at that age with Bob.

Great dude. Great reporter. And I’m so happy that he gets to go out on his own terms, a fate that few get anymore in this line of work. I’ll say that he’s pretty deserving of it, too. 

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