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The 49ers Reportedly Have Given Jimmy Garoppolo Permission to Seek Trade

Garoppolo's agent is Don Yee, and I'm sure he's good, but I don't see how he can convince a team to trade for Garoppolo until they see him throw in person.

Grant Cohn

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Will the 49ers actually trade Jimmy Garoppolo soon?

The 49ers have given Garoppolo's agents permission to seek a trade for their client, according to ESPN. As if the 49ers and Garoppolo's agents haven't been searching for a trade partner all year. The way this report was phrased makes it seem like the 49ers have given up trying to trade Garoppolo and are telling his agents, "Hey, knock yourselves out." 

Garoppolo's agent is Don Yee, and I'm sure he's good, but I don't see how he can convince a team to trade for Garoppolo until they see him throw in person. And Garoppolo won't be fully cleared to make all the throws until mid-August at the earliest. Which means he won't be able to showcase his arm to a prospective team in a preseason game, a practice or a private workout for roughly another month. So even if he looks great in that throwing session, he won't have much time to prepare for the regular season opener.

Will a team really trade for Garoppolo and his $24.2 million salary a week or two before the season and expect him to be their starter? After missing OTAs, minicamp and training camp? For Garoppolo to start Week 1, he would need time to learn a new team's playbook. And he won't have that time.

It seems likely that no matter what team Garoppolo plays for this season, he'll be a backup when the season begins. That's why I believe the 49ers will keep Garoppolo as a backup and try to trade him before the trade deadline during the season to a team whose quarterback gets injured.

Stay tuned.

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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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