Kyle Shanahan Not Confident Jimmy Garoppolo will Play Again This Season

Don't expect to see Jimmy Garoppolo play for the 49ers again this season. Or maybe ever again.

Don't expect to see Jimmy Garoppolo play for the 49ers again this season. Or maybe ever again.

When I asked Kyle Shanahan on Monday if Garoppolo will play again this season, Shanahan said, "I wouldn't say I'm confident."

Strange.

Garoppolo suffered two high-ankle sprains this season -- Week 2 against the Jets, and Week 7 against the Patriots. The first sprain kept him out of two games. The second sprain was supposed to be a six-week injury. But it happened seven weeks ago. And Garoppolo still hasn't even begun to practice.

As opposed to George Kittle, who broke his foot in the same game against the Patriots, and will practice this week. His injury was supposed to take two weeks longer to heal than Garoppolo's injury. But Kittle is fighting to come back, and Garoppolo apparently isn't.

Here's what Shanahan said about Garoppolo's injury on Monday:

"I think it's up in the air. I'm waiting to hear from the doctors. When you have the high-ankle sprain that he had, that was worse than everyone else's and it was so close to surgery, the only way we're going to put him back out there is if it's completely healed and he's not at risk of having surgery on it. I don't want to put him out there for the last game or the last two games for him to have a chance to reinjure it and have surgery in the offseason. Until the doctors tell me there's no chance of that, and that has to do with Jimmy pushing himself like he has been doing, having no soreness and things like that, that's when we'll do it. That's why it is a week-to-week thing right now. We've gotten over the hump, but it is a risk, and we're not going to do it if there's a risk. We feel talking to Jimmy and the doctors there's a risk this week, so we'll put it off another week, see how it goes. He's rehabbing as hard as anyone can. We'll reevaluate it next Monday."

I'm guessing the reevaluation won't be much different. I don't expect Garoppolo to play again this season or be on the 49ers next season. I expect he'll be a salary-cap casualty when the cap goes down.