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Is there a Trade Market for Jimmy Garoppolo?

Why would any team be that desperate when they can simply sign a comparable player for a quarter of the price in free agency?

Grant Cohn

The 49ers and The NFL Network insist a trade market will exist for Jimmy Garoppolo this offseason.

Really?

We're talking about a quarterback the 49ers want to replace so bad, they spent three first-round picks and a third rounder on his heir apparent. They didn't just take a quarterback who fell to them. They mortgaged the future to get rid of Garoppolo.

That's because Garoppolo is a game manager. Ideally, the 49ers want him to pass as infrequently as possible. They want to take the game out of his hands. And that's because he rarely passes downfield, makes very few big-time throws, is turnover prone and slow to move and process information. There are lots of available quarterbacks with his limitations.

And yet Garoppolo is expensive. The 49ers are holding out for a second-round pick in return for him, which means some team would have to like Garoppolo so much, they'd send the 49ers a valuable pick just so they can pay Garoppolo $27 million next season or sign him to a large extension.

Why would any team be that desperate when they can simply sign a comparable player for a quarter of the price in free agency? Teddy Bridgewater will be available. He has Garoppolo's skillset.

And so do rookies. Drafting a quarterback in Round 1 would cost a team far less than trading for Garoppolo and spending big bucks on him.

Why would the Saints trade for Garoppolo when they have the cheap Jameis Winston under contract, plus a first-round pick they can spend on another cheap quarterabck?

Why would the Broncos trade for Garoppolo when they could just draft a quarterback or re-sign Bridgewater?

Garoppolo is like a Toyota Camry that costs $250,000 because it has leather seats, a woodgrain steering wheel and butterfly doors. But it's still a Camry with limited horsepower. You can get the same horsepower for much cheaper.

Plus, teams know the 49ers have to get Garoppolo's contract off the books fast so they can extend Nick Bosa and Deebo Samuel this offseason. Teams simply can wait for the 49ers to cut him.

As things stand now, I don't see a trade market for Garoppolo. Maybe things will change, though.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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