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The 49ers Can't Find a Trade Partner for Jimmy Garoppolo

The 49ers have a choice -- they can cut Garoppolo or keep him on the roster. I'm guessing they'll keep him on the roster.

Grant Cohn

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What a shocker.

After stubbornly holding onto Jimmy Garoppolo all offseason in hopes that a trade market for him magically would materialize out of thin air, it hasn't, according to the NFL Network's Ian Rapoport.

"Jimmy Garoppolo with the 49ers -- obviously he is not their future quarterback," Rapoport said. "They made it abundantly clear it is going to be Trey Lance. Are the 49ers going to be able to trade Garoppolo and his $20-plus-million salary? My understanding is a trade partner, as of right now, absent some quarterback injury, does not exist. So the 49ers' options -- they've made this very clear, including recently, from the comments of general manager John Lynch (Thursday) night -- the options are either cut him, or somehow, someway keep him on the roster. We will see which way they end up going, but the answer must come pretty soon."

Rapoport mentioned that the 49ers have a choice -- they can cut Garoppolo or keep him on the roster. I'm guessing they'll keep him on the roster, considering Kyle Shanahan, John Lynch and Jed York all have said Garoppolo is too good to release, and they'd be happy to keep him as Trey Lance's backup.

At no point since the 49ers drafted Lance have they shown real confidence in him. Every step of the way, they've acted nervous and scared about the transition to him as the starting quarterback. That doesn't mean he'll fail -- it simply means the 49ers are scared of the unknown. That's another reason why I believe they'll keep Garoppolo -- to hedge their bets, just in case Lance flops. They don't know what to expect, and they want to protect themselves from major embarrassment, even if there's only a small chance that Lance is bust.

Cutting Garoppolo would be a huge vote of confidence for Lance. Unfortunately for him, I don't see Garoppolo going anywhere any time soon.

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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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